Women's Health in South Tyneside
Community Centre Work - Womens's Health in South Tyneside (WHIST)
Community Centre Work - Womens's Health in South Tyneside (WHIST)
One of our approaches is to work with people in a place they already feel comfortable in, alongside people they already know. Instead of having to join an environmental group, which may be in a new place with new people, we reduce barriers to participation, by supporting them to form their own environmental group. Our work at WHIST has given us insights into how this can be done successfully. The members of the group (called Women Against Waste) are now strong local advocates for the environment and have initiated changes at WHIST to encourage sustainability.
History of Group
History of Group
Key to the success is having a supportive contact at the community centre. We were invited in to deliver a display on saving energy and sustainability in the centre coffee room where we also asked people what they were interested in about the environment. This was followed up with a participatory activity at a drop in women's health day. A monthly 1.5 hour session was then set up.
Monthly Group
Monthly Group
The monthly sessions are part adult education session and part sharing of what the participants have done in terms of green advocacy and action in the community. Education sessions include; Waste hierachy and the circular economy; Impacts of consumption, for example, mining of metals and impacts on communities of soil and water pollution; Visit to the local recycling and reuse centre; Energy management in the home; Energy efficieny in the home; Ecology; Photosynthesis and basic plant biology; Litter Picking; Botanic drawing; Climate Change and Biodiversity loss.
Below are some examples of the impacts, there are many more!
Education Outcomes
Through learning about energy management in the home, one lady stopped leaving her heating on for long periods when she was out, instead using the timer to turn the heating on just before she returned home. With this and other measures she saved xxxx.
Green Advocacy in the Community
After learning about the impacts of metal mining on soil and water pollution two members of the group focused on batteries, as these are not currently collected as part of the kerbside collection by South Tyneside council. A battery collection was started at WHIST but this has grown and one lady has collected over 3000 batteries to take for disposal! The other member has been ensuring that local supermarket collection points remain operational and not full of rubbish, and through getting technical information from the recycling centre has ensured that her local supermarkets accept vape batteries. She has also been a 'secret shopper' checking on the advice the local authority gives out regarding battery disposal to ensure it is correct.
Impacts on WHIST
The group ran a coffee morning to fundraise for a recycling collection including a seperate paper collection from WHIST. As voluntary groups have to pay for business recycling.
As a result of their advocacy there are no single use plastics sold or used in the cafe, and the cafe sells refillable water bottles.
