Here's a volunteer advert we're running as Friends of the Earth in a few places around the country to coincide with the Government's consultation on the National Pollinator Strategy. I'll add another post over the weekend talking about the organising context to this, but for now let the ad stand on its own merits. Big thanks to our placement student Zarqa Mahmood who helped me write it. And if you like what you read and want to help, get in touch! Or if you fancy using it in your own area, feel free. Remember that you can put free volunteer adverts up on sites like Charity Job and Environment Job, especially if you have a structured opportunity to offer.
Want to take action to protect and connect with nature? We are looking for enthusiastic volunteers to help with The Bee Cause campaign at a crucial time. Bees are essential to our survival as pollinators of hundreds of different crops as well as of plants providing habitats for countless other species. In Spring 2012 Friends of the Earth launched a campaign - The Bee Cause - aimed at halting bee decline and highlighting the importance of nature. We've had great success - the Government has just put out its National Pollinator Strategy this month (March 2014) setting out how it plans to meet this challenge. However, Friends of the Earth believes the Strategy is still too weak on issues like pesticide use, intensive farming, new housing developments and funding for bee-friendly projects. We now have an eight week consultation period to persuade them to make it stronger. And we'd really love your help with this. Even one Bee Action in the next 8 weeks could make all the difference. Things you could do include: - organizing an informal gathering of interested local people - a fun activity-driven campaign stall at a local event - promoting or planting wild flower areas in your community. - or you might have your own ideas and we'd be really keen to hear them. Who we're looking for? We're looking for people who can self-start and who want to learn how to bring others together to take action in a good cause. Enthusiasm for nature and the environment is more important than experience. How we would help you Each volunteer would have a staff mentor who would help you plan your Bee Action through telephone and e-mail coaching as well as providing information and resources and connecting you to any other local volunteers. There would also be an opportunity to meet other activists at a Friends of the Earth training event in Taunton on April 26.
Do let us know if you'd like to take action with Friends of the Earth and we'll be in touch with you to help you get started.
You can't do everything at once. Not just a master of affairs of the heart, Mr Cohen also knows the power of prioritisation. First you take Manhattan, then (and only then) do you take Berlin.
Joking aside, there's a lot to be said for this typically zen piece of advice from the Greatest Living Canadian After Joni Mitchell. Ambitious end goals, say, taking Berlin, or making your town the greenest in the country are good, but they can be scary. It's easy to be disheartened if you don't know where to start. The solution: focus on the immediate step of taking Manhattan. Or, if you like, persuading your local school to put solar panels on its roof. It's a thing worth doing in its own right but – if understood and communicated clearly - also a step towards your own personal Berlin. To give another example, getting 3 people in a room to agree to start a Friends of the Earth group or try a new local campaign might not feel like a big deal. You could say that you can't start a string quartet with three people, never mind change the world. And yet it's a necessary step in the process of building change. It's not as superficially thrilling perhaps as the triumphal endgame you hope for. But it's the process of taking Manhattan that gives the promise of taking Berlin its meaning.
I'll kick this off - if I get my local group off the ground in the new year, I would like us to aim to be like seminal German psychedelic rock band Can. Wait, come back...
Can were an immensely creative partnership of equals, coming together from different backgrounds in rock, jazz and experimental classical music. And they played for each other, editing their workdown painstakingly from long improvised jams into a surprisingly accessible, funky form. The example of vocalist Damo Suzuki and keyboardist Irmin Schmidt contributing when they had something to add and simply remaining silent when not on Can tracks is one of the best examples of sublimating the individual ego to group need in music I can think of. It's simultaneously some of the most passionate music I've ever heard and some of the most enjoyable. Heck, Can even accidentally invented the Happy Mondays.
Creativity, diversity, equality, accessibility, teamwork, balancing intensity and fun - this is why I like Can. This is why I got into local organising. Now, your turn in the comments thread please - what rock band would you like your local campaign group to be like? Or - for the fortunate ones - what rock band IS your local group already like?
