About us
We are a local, community-led climate action group, focusing on engaging residents and businesses in Wotton-under-Edge and surrounding villages, increasing awareness of climate change and the nature crisis, and offering practical solutions to the challenges that these present.
The goal of the Wotton Area Climate Action Network is to work towards making our local area carbon neutral by 2030, in support of Stroud District Council's own Carbon Neutral Vision.
How did we form and how do we operate?
How we began
Listening to local voices
Back in June 2019 it became clear that many local people were becoming increasingly concerned about climate change and wanted to take positive steps towards reducing their carbon footprint. They wanted to help our community to cope with the impacts of the climate emergency and to protect and care for our local wildlife.
Through public meetings and an online survey we listened to what mattered most asked local people to prioritise what they thought was important in our fight against climate change.
How we operate
Wotton Area CAN has a core volunteer team and is supported by Transition Stroud. We operate as an 'unincorporated association' (UA) which is in many ways similar to that of a registered charity. We believe that being a UA is more suited to our current needs and style.
The prioritised list of what mattered most to our community helped a small group of us to define our key focus areas and write our group's constitution.
As a network we aim to work with any and all existing groups to achieve our aims. We benefit from the support of Transition Stroud, who are an umbrella organisation designed to support CAN groups across Stroud District.
What we offer
Practical projects and events, plus expertise sharing through free guest speaker meetings.
We help supporters take part in projects to help reduce carbon emissions, including tree and hedge planting (which tends to be busiest in the winter months), promoting re-use and reducing single-use plastic, and sign-posting ways of reducing your carbon footprint.
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We regularly hold free public meetings with local guest speakers who are happy to share their expertise. Anyone can come along and learn more about projects such as retrofitting the home, or installing solar. We always make sure there's time for Q&As.
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In addition to practical projects and free public meetings, we hold events that are designed to take the stress out of climate positive decisions, such as eBike trials.
Join our core volunteer team and make a BIG impact
Are you keen to do something really positive with your spare time? Why not have an informal chat with one of our core team volunteers, we're always looking for people to join us! Our core group meets monthly to plan events, projects and guest speaker opportunities. We're super supportive of each other (we've forged amazing new friendships through our work). We'd really value your input, whether you can spare a couple of hours a month, or more, we'd love to hear from you.