Something to be proud of

By Fran Southgate

Living Wetlands Officer

I had the pleasure of being invited to attend the UK Charity Awards in London yesterday evening. Along with the RSPB and five other partners, our Arun and Rother Connections project was shortlisted as one of three national examples of best practice in environment and conservation in the UK.

This project has taken form over seven years or more, involving hundreds, if not thousands of different people who have dedicated their time and energy to trying to help enhance a 77,000 hectare river catchment. The project aimed to help empower people to tackle big issues as a landscape scale, and to reconnect them to their local river catchment through everything from community river restoration, to forest schools. At the last count volunteers had contributed over 11,500 volunteer hours to the project, and we haven’t finished yet. We have achieved so much in the last 3 years of the project, that it is hard to remember it all. In the end though, I think it is the community which helped to empower us to do all the work, and not the other way round.

For me, recognition is not the main reason that I helped to set up this project, although it was surprisingly heart warming to be acknowledged. We didn’t win the award, but we were up against some stiff competition, and just to be shortlisted was enough. It was humbling and inspiring to see how much work many charities have done, with small armies of volunteers, especially given some of the bad press that charities have received over the last year.

Many good things were said about the wonderful work of all the charities who were nominated, as well as those who weren’t nominated but who are still out there doing incredible work. One comment which struck me in particular was when someone said ‘It gives me hope that so many people are willing to dedicate their lives to making the world a better place. You are the best of us, and for that I thank you’. It was a privilege to be in the presence of so many of these people.

Fran Southgate, Mike Clarke, CEO of the RSPB (UK) and Rachel Carless ARC project manager