Alnwick Rotary puts focus on Environmental issues

ROTARY ALNWICK’S FOCUS ON THE ENVIRONMENT

This Rotary year, the majority of the Club’s service activities have focused on the environment, and in many instances this focus has linked together two of the Club’s priority areas, namely environment and our work with young people. The Club has formally adopted the RGB&I Policy Statement for the Environment and one of our Club Members serves as Lead Rotarian for the Environment.

We support three RotaKids Clubs, two of which developed environmental projects during the year. One Club, at Swansfield Park School, has worked on the establishment of a bird feeding and observation centre in the school grounds. The other, at Whittingham Primary School, has focused on enhancing the school and village environments by planting flowers and vegetables. The Club also supported the Whittingham RotaKids to undertake the John Muir Environmental Award and promote environmental thinking and action throughout their school.

We received a large number of entries from our local schools for the RGB&I Young Environmentalist competition and were delighted that our Club Intermediate level winner Kobi Horne-Smith went on to win the District level of this competition. We also organised a substantial ‘Environmental Impact Challenge’ for students at Duchess’s Community High school which won the national RGB&I Rodney Huggins Environmental Award 2022.

We are holding an ‘Environment and Youth Celebration’ event in June with presentations from young people and outside speakers. RotaKids, High School students, their parents and teachers will all be invited.

Aside from our work with young people, we joined with Alnwick Town Council and ‘Alnwick in Bloom’ to plant 8,000 purple crocus corms in the autumn and more recently assisted the Town Council with the planting of 25 Japanese Cherry Trees. 

We also enjoyed a ‘Rotary Day of Service’ when together with the other Clubs in Group 1 we set about tidying up the environment of our local area, working with students from Duchess’s School.

The Club very much looks forward to continuing our focus on the environment and young people during the forthcoming Rotary year.

Joy Palmer Cooper

President, Rotary Alnwick