Coffee Morning at Richard Pike's, Settle

12 April

Richard kindly offered his new flat in the centre of Settle as a base for a coffee morning in each Saturday in April. Ont the 12th April the designated charity was our Rainforest Fund.

At the previous Saturday coffee morning some of his neighbours told me about their holiday in Borneo. Their hotel and its grounds were a sanctuary for wildlife. Much of the land between the airport and the hotel had been scraped clean of trees, by huge machines, scraping up the clay soil.. They showed me a picture they had taken of a rescued orang utan.

On the 12th people were generous and we raised £125 for the funds.

A Rocha Ghana - what projects could we support?

19 March

What is A Rocha Ghana doing, that we may be able to, and interested to help with?

Recently (19 March) I had a useful talk over the phone with Jenny Bowles. She visited the A Rocha Ghana Project in 2006, under the auspices of the “Climate Stewards Project” of A Rocha. Her trip included a visit to the project with people near the Mole National Park.

She told me about

1. The tree nurseries
2. The bee keeping projects
3. The two schools workers – one in the north, one in the south.
4. The story/parable of the disappearing wildlife.


1. The tree nurseries (See picture of girls carrying seedlings above)

The tree nurseries are run by local people. In the south they are attached to schools or universities. there are 11 sites. The nurseries are planted with 90% native trees that can eventually be used for timber – e.g. mahogany, kapok. Then there are 10% fruit or nut trees and the people chose which ones they want. It is important that the nurseries are designed and manged by the locals so they “own it”

As soon as the people see the benefit of the ownership of the nursery they get on board, and the attitude extends beyond looking after the nursery, to looking after the forest..
The people at the Mole reserve live in a remote place, and they are keen to be part of a bigger project..

In remote areas people do not have the resources to improve degraded land. “We used to have trees” they say.

2. The bee keeping projects

Bees need trees. So if people get involved in the production or honey they see the need for trees.

3. The two schools workers – one in the north, one in the south.

Jenny told me how exciting and thrilling it was to see the caliber and quality of the two schools workers, Emmanuel Akom in the south and Daryl Bosu in the north.
In a primary school classroom – tin roof, mud walls and no decorations on the walls and eager children packed behind the desks, the worker asks

“What happens when the last tree dies?”

“The last man dies” the children chant back.

Daryl was able to arrange for one school group to go for a day field trip to the National Park.

I wonder if we could sponsor another such trip?

Or I wonder if we could sponsor some plant identification books. I remember when I was in West Africa (long ago) how useful I found a book called "A Handbook of West African" flowers by Harold Saunders. We are spoilt for choice in the UK for wild flowers books and other natural history books.

I have written to A Rocha to see what they most need.

And the story of the disappearing wildlife? - That will have to wait for the next blog entry.

Settle Scottish Country Dancing Class donate. See them dance!!

Thurs 3rd April:

The Scottish Country Dancing Class meets in the Church Hall each Thursday evening at 7.30pm in Autumn, Winter and Spring. Yesterday 3 April they made a collection and donated to buy half an acre. Here they are dancing "Branches Together-see video",

then again doing the last part even better-see video!

Name Change

Wed 5 March 2008:

Some visitors to this blog may have noticed a subtle name change.

When the project started on 1st January the provisional name I gave the project was: the St John's Methodist Church (Settle) Rainforest Fund Project. However this was a name that would have to be passed by the Church Council which normally meets twice a year. The 5th March was the date of the next church council meeting.

At the meeting they (a majority) said that they did not want it to be called The St John's Methodist Church (Settle) Rainforest Fund Project, but they said they would support the project. One lady said "You may be glad in the long run that we said this."

So now it is called The Rainforest Fund Project.

"E-peace", Biodiversity Conservation in the Dales and Leeds University Ecology Course

1st March 2008:

"E-peace believes that we should conserve and enhance the biodiversity and nature of the Yorkshire Dales for its own sake, and the government should support this. We should not have sustainable development."

This was the gist of part of the poster that a group of c. 10 Undergraduates had prepared about the hypothetical organisation E-peace as their contribution to the role play exercise in the 1st Year Field course run by Leeds University. We were meeting at Gargrave Village Hall. I am an active member of Craven Conservation Group Committee (our local natural history society/conservation group) and was there to be a "resource person".

Resource people for other groups included quarry person (executive?), A tourist, a farmer, a National Park worker etc.

Each group had about 45 minutes to pick the brains of their resource person.

So I told them a little about Craven Conservation Group and also eight other conservation organisations with which I or other members of the group have connections, and gave them some leaflets and photocopied articles. CCG has many activities including survey work, educational walks, conservation work such as scrub clearance on bogs, help with the local biodiversity action plan, and occasional protest/issue letters.

Helpful to me had been a visit to one of our members who does work for the Council for the Protection of Rural England. She and another member of CCG were featured in the local paper this week in a lively article about flowers on roadside verges.

I also gave them some Christian Ecology Link leaflets, and offered to get a Moslem leaflet should anyone want one.

They asked me "Why should we protect the nature of the Dales before anything else?, and not have sustainable development?"..

Their question was refreshing - We are getting so used in the Dales and other organisations to have to "sell" wildlife and show it is useful.

This put me on the spot. There are so many if, buts, provisos etc -

1. Which bits do you save? - there are some areas of high importance in the Dales, and some that have been so "improved" by agriculture that I would not have thought it was worth spending money on them... Was it their remit to save/improve everything? It would be better using the resources e.g. for tropical rainforest or countries with higher biodiversity.

2. Which rare plants and habitats of the Dales to mention? This group were just starting their degrees and mostly are not naturalists, several of them had not visited the Dales yet and this is the first day of their field course.. I told them about two rare plants (which I won't put on this blog,) and then told them about the Northern Marsh Orchid which is a beautiful plant which grows where water oozes out of limestone soil. I told them that half the limestone pavement (a habitat of international importance) in Britain occurs in North Yorkshire, and said we still had a few valuable lowland bogs and fens.

3. There are extremely few species and habitats which only occur in Britain. 15,000 or so years ago the North of England under ice. The species that grow here now have all spread back in.

"So" I thought, "Shouldn't we really be using our limited resources for protecting habitats with more biodiversity importance than the Dales - such as mangrove swamps, tropical forests, coral reefs, even our own sea bed floor."

4. We have to protect our "Nature" places for their own sake, and because if we don't look after our places of conservation importance, how can we expect people in other countries to look after theirs, which in many cases are so much more valuable than ours?
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Palm Oil Perambulations and Soya Search

Why aren't we doing more to save the rainforests and other species rich habitats?


According to a Friends of the Earth report written two years ago, at CURRENT RATES of Forest destruction in Indonesia, the orangutan will have become extinct in the wild within twelve years from then (- so that's ten years from now). Forest is being burned to grow huge monoculture oil palm plantations.

Fact: 10% of the food you buy in a supermarket has palm oil in it.

If you were to stand in the food department in Tescos or ASDA or the Coop and throw a cucumber up in the air there is a one in ten chance it would land on a food with palm oil in it. Usually it is just labelled vegetable oil or hydrogenated vegetable oil.

Try it. Go round your supermarket and look at the labels. Often it is only the high quality food that actually labels it as palm oil - the cheaper brands just label it simply as vegetable oil.
-----------------------------
Another crop that is replacing the rainforest is Soya. A chemical called soya lecithin is used as an emulsifying agent (helps water and oil to mix together) in many food products. It has other uses too.

It is also exported to the UK in vast quantities to feed cattle.

Meanwhile have a look at this site.

http://www.regenwald.org/international/englisch/news.php?id=857


So tomorrow, why don't you go for a walk round your supermarket or grocer's shop and see if it is true that 10%of the food contains palm oil?

Finally to my delight I found the following:.... Patersons olive oil oatcakes:



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How to organise a presentation evening

Friday 8th Feb- Presentation Evening

A further £65 was donated at the Presentation Evening, bringing the total raised so far to: £295

The presentation evening went well.


In writing up this blog I am torn between:

1. Making it sound like a ravingly successful project (when in fact there is sometimes an awful lot of work for a small return..)
2. Writing this in a rivetting blog style (still learning) rivett, rivett
   
3. Giving useful advice for others who may want to do a similar project
   
4. Just making a true diary of what happened.. It is hard enough finding time to write things up while I can still remember.

Who came?

1. Our team of five organisers: Myself - the speaker, David Briggs the chairman , digital projector provider and operator, and Hilary, Lesley and Richard making the coffee and scones.
2. Two people came from our church
3. A couple came as a result of my handing out leaflets for the coffee morning
   
4. Six people came as a result of my sending out emails to Craven Conservation Group and others.

I wrote out a detailed programme and emailed it to the chairman and we both forgot to bring printed copies. However the preparation did mean we were able to pack a lot into the session.

At the beginning I asked people to work in pairs and find from their partner: their name, where they lived and anything else the partner wanted to say. They then had to introduce their partner to the group. This created a good buzz.

I gave a 15 minute talk on the importance or rainforests, and how they are being lost- e.g., Just one urgent example is that at current rates of forest destruction in Borneo the Orang-utan will become extinct in the wild withing 10 years according to a FOE report.

Main threats throughout the world include:

• To Palm oil
• To soya
• To cattle ranching
  
• To mining such as "coltan" rare metals for mobile phones in the Congo Basin
• To logging, especially illegal logging

I showed how much of this is linked to things we buy

Palm oil - soap, hydrogenated vegetable oil in food, etc
Soya- soya lecithins (emulsifiers) in processed food
Soya - to cattle food in this country
Cattle - Corned beef, leather
Coltan - Mobile phones
Logging - Garden furniture in Garden stores.



Then we showed extracts from two videos of the World land Trust: One on Belize, made in 1994, and one on the Philippines made more recently. The Philippines video is about an island - where as well as forest there is mangrove swamps and also an important marine reserve. Fishing is a key source of income for the people there but overfishing by big trawler ships and also local over fishing had reduced fish numbers. By having certain parts of the coral sea protected from all fishing, fish numbers were beginning to pick up.

There was then coffee and scones and lots of opportunity for questions and discussion.

Work before the meeting involved:
Sending off to World Land Trust for the videos and more leaflets
Having support of local group at church who voluntered to get projector tea coffee etc
Preparing display used at coffee morning.
Producing posters for local shops and sending a short item to the local paper.
Sending out an email to my contacts list.

How to get more people to your coffee morning..

On Tuesday 5th February we had planned a coffee morning at Richard's flat.

1. We changed the location and held it at the Church - so that it became "The First Coffee Morning of the Season in the Church" - The church has coffee mornings on Tuesday (market day) mornings - but there is a break over winter. This was good because more people know where the church is than Richard's flat, and a good number of the "Regulars" came
2. This regular Coffee Morning has two big signs we put up outside the church. These signs drew two sets of people.
   
3. I had put up a few posters round town.
   
4. I spent half an hour just before we opened going round Settle with A6 size leaflets giving them to peopleI knew and I called in at several shops and Age concern. This resulted in three sets of people who would not have come otherwise, and who also were very generous.
   

People could see the big writing on the display I had made without having to go too close.

Everyone enjoyed the freshly ground fair trade coffee.

About 30 people came including ourselves, and we raised £80. That was £50 to buy and acre with World Land Trust and £30 to A Rocha ghana.
Thanks to all who supported it!

Speakers Club, Amazon, and "Don't Eat Beef"

"You can save the Rainforest" was the title of my ten minute speech at Craven Speakers Club on Monday 28th Jan 2009, it went well. The tips I have learned at Speakers Club are helpful. I'm not giving the text here - You'll have to come and listen to it sometime!! I wore a brand new t-shirt that a friend had given me two years earlier with pictures of useful fruits of the Amazon. and would you believe it - whilst I was practicing the speech two hours before the talk, she skyped (phoned) me from Brazil! "What should I tell them in my speech?" I asked "Tell them not to eat beef" she said. "They are cutting down the forest for soya and then the soya is exported as cattle food to Britain."

Sean McDonagh's Talk at Bradford

On Tuesday 29 January I attended Sean McDonagh's two talks at Bradford University. I used the opportunity to tell people about the St John's Methodist Church Rainforest Project.

Fr Sean McDonagh (on the left) is a Columban priest who worked in the Philippines and has written many books on Christianity and Care of the Earth. His talks today were on Climate Change, Environment and Faith. I had taken a display of Christian Ecology Link Resources.
At the beginning of the first talk members of the audience were invited to say a little about their organisations and upcoming events - WHICH IS AN EXCELLENT IDEA. (In the Centre is the Bishop of Bradford and on the right the organiser)

I told people about Christian Ecology Link and I told them about the St John's Methodist Church Settle Rainforest Project. You can see my report of the day here:

Sean McDonagh has written a book about species extinctions, which is very good in spite of the morbid cover. I give some of the VERY USEFUL quotes and facts from his book here. You can print it as a leaflet here.

Our crops replace the forest

On Monday 28th January I was scheduled to give a speech at Craven Speakers Club in Skipton. At Speakers clubs we practice giving speeches and are evaluated by other members of the club - and everyone learns and has fun from the performances. I had chosen to give one entitled "You can help save the rainforest".

I spent much of Monday preparing for this. I took for part of the theme the fact that according to a Friends of the Earth Report, in ten years time at current rates of forest destruction in Borneo there will be no orang-utans left in the wild.

I wanted to show some of the main reasons why the forest is disappearing and how it is linked to our lifestyle. I needed visual aids. First I found my eight year old mobile phone -coltan.

Coltan - rare metals from quarries in Zaire. Then I toddled down to the Coop.

Palm Oil: Brown bread rolls with vegetable oil (palm) and soya four.
Peanut butter - well that has palm oil from the outside of the nut. - It gives peanut butter its special taste..
If you were to throw a stick of celery in the air in the food section of a supermarket it would have a 10% chance of landing on something containing palm oil - usually labelled simply as vegetable oil.

Soya: White Fair trade white chocolate with soya emulsifier (soya lecithin - I had learned a new word).
Soy sauce
And the bread rolls above.
And really I should add ordinary British beef -- since our cattle are fed on soya.

Corned beef- from Brazil. Hmm interesting that one variety bothered to state that it was made from cattle not from newly cleared land.

Whilst there I met David and Hilary Briggs (Our minister and his wife).

Later that evening he skyped (phoned) me to suggest we have the first coffee morning at the Church rather than at a house to make it a bigger event and also to start of the "Coffee Morning Season in the Church"

I'll write about how the talk went shortly
Meanwhile I need to prepare display material to be used at the talk to be given by Sean McDonagh at Bradford on Tuesday 29th.

Donate Online

The following pages have just been created and are awaiting your donations! :)
www.justgiving.com/settle-WLT
www.justgiving.com/settle-arocha-ghana

I have put Facebook Links to them from my profile in Facebook.

A Rocha UK is dealing with the money we send in for A Rocha Ghana.

So now I hope the money will pour in.. ???
Please consider donating to one of these charities.

Thank you - Judith Allinson

And the News on BBC as I write this -
BBC webpage 24 Jan 2008: Brazil Amazon deforestation soars - rising commodity prices are encouraging farmers to clear more land to plant crops such as soya

Charities we are supporting

So, I wrote something for the coming Sunday's Church Newsheet:

The St John’s Methodist Church (Settle) Rainforest Fund Project:

We will be supporting mainly two charities: World Land Trust and A Rocha Ghana

World Land Trust

says: “You can do incredible things: For just £25 you can buy Half an Acre of critically endangered habitat that will save some of the rarest animals and plants on earth. Working with local. people we create reserves to save precious habitats and species. Already we have rescued over 350,000 acres of wilderness in Belize, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Patagonia and the Philippines. David Attenborough is one of WLT's patrons.”

A Rocha Ghana

This is a Christian organisation which is why I have chosen it as one of our lead charities. The Ghana project (formerly called the Eden Conservation Society) works with sustainable projects with two communities who live next to Mole National Park in northern Ghana.

Make a note in your diary of two meetings for the project: (More details of these next week)

Tue 5^th Feb: 10am-12. Coffee Morning Richard Pike invites you to Flat 7, Dawsons Court, Settle

Fri 8^th Feb: 7.30pm. Rainforest Fund Presentation at St John’s Methodist Church Hall

First Planning Meeting and First Event Planned

I have now visited 31 different people in the congregation over the past seven weeks. Almost half the congregation. Most are sympathetic, some keen, some have ideas (which I'll mention later) - and a second person gave a donation! Great.

Monday evening of 22 Jan saw the first official planning meeting: - Four of us - the minister, his wife, myself and Richard, a member of the congregation who nobly offered his flat for the evening.

Richard also offered to host a coffee morning Tuesday 5th February at his flat. We have an event planned! Hurray.

The second event is to be a presentation by myself about the project and two main charities we will be supporting - This is on Friday 8th February in our church hall at 7.30pm..

The minister agreed to include the project in the agenda of the next Church Council Meeting on March 5th.

Although I had initially planned to support three charities - World Land Trust, Cool Earth and A Rocha, the committee decided it would be much better if I just concentrated on two, so we chose World land Trust and A Rocha.

It was suggested I write a paragraph for the upcoming notice sheet due to go to press on Wednesday... That's my next task.

Display in the Church Hall

We are fortunate in having a good church hall. It is used by many different groups during the week.

I made a display about the Rainforest Fund Project. On Tue 8 January I put it on the other half of the board used by Rumpus, the After School Club.

It shows how much has been donated. £50 so far! By one generous lady.

Before Christmas I had started visiting members of our congregation, asking for ideas and ensuring that there would be support for the project. I visited about 15 people - but it was really encouraging when one of the first people donated some money.

I realise now that I need to put the word Settle, and maybe even North Yorkshire on the title above the display. I am hoping that a few of the groups who use the hall will join in and contribute.

The project is born

On 1st January 2008, in Settle, North Yorkshire, UK, the St John's Methodist Church Settle Rainforest Fund Project was born.
The primary aim is to raise money towards protecting rainforest (and other irreplaceable habitats).

We are supporting three projects - two are secular projects of the type "Buy an acre of Rainforest" and the third supports a Ghanaian Christian group that is running projects to encourage a villagers on land adjacent to a nature reserve to use the land sustainably.

Please note that whilst I (Judith Allinson) am Web Editor for Christian Ecology Link (CEL) and for St John's Methodist Church Settle , the views expressed are personal, and do not necessarily reflect those of CEL or St John's Methodist Church.
Feedback and comments are welcomed.

In future postings I will say how the project started, and how it is proceeding.

Come back next week! See how much money we have raised. See what we have decided to do.

We hope you will support the project too.