Hosting NCS - Saturday 16th November 2019

The Stall

Ealing Friends of the Earth hosted another group of young people undertaking the National Citizen Service (NCS) in October-November. NCS is a government backed programme which brings young people aged 15 to 17 from different backgrounds together for a common purpose. There are three sessions. The first is an introductory session which sets the 'challenge', the second is a follow up to monitor progress, and the final session which was held on 16th November is when they carry out their project.
 

Bulb Planting

The challenge we set them was to organise a face-to-face activity to tell people (especially young people) in Ealing about the climate change emergency, and then to organise a social media activity to tell people in Ealing about the climate change emergency.

The group was quite organised and cohesive. They decided for the face-to-face activity, to make a tree of some sort and ask the public to stick notes with suggestions to Ealing Council on what they could do about the climate change emergency. They also decided to make little credit sized cards with points about what individuals could do about the climate change emergency.

For the social media activity, they were talking about setting up an Ealing Friends of the Earth Instagram account and doing an Instagram campaign.

As the weather was forecast to be reasonable, it was arranged to meet in Walpole Park where they would put up a stall to work from.

The stall worked well. Several people came to see what they were doing and pinned notes on the tree that they had drawn, the students discussed climate change with a couple of people and also walked round the park handing out EFoE leaflets and their Eco-friendly checklist cards. At one point, the Ealing park ranger intervened as we hadn't applied for permission to put up the stall – but she was very positive and instead got the students involved in a planting bulbs project nearby.

Students, NCS Staff & EFoE members

 In the afternoon the social media project didn’t really take off as the student who has set up an Ealing Friends of the Earth Instagram account was absent and we couldn’t get the password for the account. Instead Nic and Caroline had a lesson on Instagram. When we get the password details we will go onto the account and put into practice what we have been taught.

For the future, NCS is changing its provider from The Challenge to other (mainly sports) organisations so it's not clear if EFoE will continue to have the opportunity to host NCS groups.

West London College Freshers Fair - 10th October 2019

We ran a stall at the Ealing Green site of West London College for their Freshers Fair on 10th October 2019, 11:00am to 2:00pm. The students at this FE college are aged between 16 and 18.

Our Stall's theme was mainly plastics and climate change. We highlighted the expense and wastefulness of buying water in disposable bottles. We also took a laptop computer so that we could show short films.

When we held a stall at WLC last year, the college had a system by which if the students visit several stalls, they got a free bag of popcorn. This was very effective in encouraging students to visit the stalls. Unfortunately this year the college weren't able to arrange for popcorn, and it was a little harder to get students to engage. However we managed to speak to over 40 people and this is a group we'd really like to get through to, so it feels well worth doing.


We knew we'd meet students from many countries and we came armed with some details about FoE around the world and about the environmental problems in areas such as the middle east and Africa.

Brentford Festival - 1st September 2019

At the start of September we made our usual appearance in the Brentford Festival.

Our stall contained a wealth of information on posters and in campaign leaflets. We also had a range of zero-waste products to sell. 

During the day we were visited by Rupa Huq MP who showed her support for the Friends of the Earth PLASTIC POLLUTION ACTION PLAN by tweeting the photograph shown here.

 

Hosting NCS - Saturday 3rd August 2019

This summer Ealing Friends of the Earth hosted a group of young people undertaking the National Citizen Service (NCS). NCS is a government backed programme which brings young people aged 15 to 17 from different backgrounds together for a common purpose.

The project we set them was to learn all they could about climate change and then deliver a talk to invited friends and run a campaign stall in Walpole Park.

There are three sessions. The first was an introductory session held on the 22nd July, where we introduced ourselves, gave a brief presentation on climate change, with slides and videos, outline the project and then left the young people to discuss and ask any questions. The second session on 27th July was to follow up and see what progress they had made. The final session on 3rd August is when they carried out their project. In addition, the day after the final session, they have a campaign day where they do something to support us but without our involvement.

The Talk

For the talk they had created a PowerPoint deck and delivered it as a group, each taking a turn to cover some of the - see the picture. UWL did us proud with an enormous lecture theatre with a huge screen. The talk was quite short and the young people decided that they'd like to do it again at the end of the afternoon and film it - which happened (in a yet bigger theatre!).

 

The Stall

They set the stall up in Walpole Park under the awning near the Rickyard cafe, at 1pm. The site was good withplenty of footfall. They had some biscuits to offer to people who answered a simple quiz. The young people turned out to be very good at engaging with the public and having so many lively youngsters with us created a buzz. We had lots of interactions and 24 people left their details on our sign-up sheet.

 

The Campaign Day

For the Campaign Day (where we are not involved) the young people decided to do a litter pick on Ealing Common and in Walpole Park and then made a mosaic- see photo.

Hanwell Carnival - 15th June 2019

Ealing FoE took part in the Hanwell Carnival again this year, focusing on the Plastics and Air Pollution & Climate Change campaigns.

 

Our stall included information boards and campaign leaflets, zero-waste products to sell, and a selection of second-hand books and plants, also for sale.

 

EFoE members took turns wearing our ‘Octopus’ festooned with plastic rubbish (see photo), and we engaged with visitors, especially families, about recycling, encouraging them to sign the Plastics campaign petition and buy some of our products. We had a separate table and bench for children to colour in templates of marine animals.

 

We attracted many families to our stall during the day and collected nearly three pages of signatures on a petition urging the Government to reduce manufacturers' and retailers' production of plastic waste.