Action for Involvement

RAE Ingenious Sustainable Housing Event – Wednesday 14th March 2012

actionforinvolvment — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:30:40 +0000

Event fully booked – waiting list in operation!

RAE Ingenious Transport Event follow-up meeting

actionforinvolvment — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:01:04 +0000

I’ve circulated the meeting notes of our recent Sustainable Transport event follow-up meeting RAE Ingenious Transport Event followup meeting 26th January 2012 Meeting Notesand gratefully appreciate the help of Gordon Ferguson and Joachim Dreimann in preparing such comprehensive notes.

There are some interesting ideas here. I am therefore delighted to say that Tim Hale, Chairman of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce Transport Group has very kindly offered to bring our organisation and its work in this respect to the attention of members of the Chamber’s Transport Forum. Tim will raise some of the points mentioned in our minutes with the relevant Transport Forum organisations and will also let me know if there is any relevant feedback received which I will obviously circulate to everyone for information.

Action for Involvement operates in an informal way. At the present time our core activities focus on bringing people in our communities together and working with key policy-makers, decision-makers or stakeholders to tackle issues affecting all of us.

Event follow-up meetings are an informal gathering of people inspired by our events to make a difference by taking on issues raised at our events and intended to be fun.

Although I am happy to offer further meetings on transport-related issues, it also needs to be viable for me to operate. Owing to increasing demands on Action for Involvement and my time I would appreciate help with taking notes which will reduce my workload and inspire me to continue providing this voluntary activity.

Sustainable Housing Event – 14th March

actionforinvolvment — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:40:44 +0000

Book now to avoid disappointment. Nearly 60 bookings since registration opened on Monday – only 13 places left.

Throwing the baby out with the bath water!

actionforinvolvment — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:34:56 +0000

I have just received a rather sad email from SCEDU – (Sheffield Community Enterprise Development Unit) which wrote with regret to inform us “that SCEDU is closing its operations at the end of February. An arrangement is in place to oversee the closure process for the period March – May. A number of interested parties have expressed their desire to establish a new social enterprise entity in Sheffield with membership drawn from social enterprise practitioners, private sector partners and leading agencies in the field. It is anticipated that the new entity will continue supporting the social enterprise sector. The Sheffield Social Enterprise Network meeting will still go ahead at SCEDU on Thursday 15^th March as the site will remain open in March. It is intended that the potential new organisation will take on the network as one of its priorities.”

All that expertise built up and thrown away!

FREE training opportunities

actionforinvolvment — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:17:05 +0000

Spectrum Futures, a social enterprise, the Voluntary Action Rotherham trading arm has received funding from Coalfields Regeneration Trust to deliver FREE training for anyone Rotherham who is unemployed and living in Rotherham. Go to their website: www.spectrumfutures.co.uk or call Suzy Cornwell Ball – 01709 726 891 or 07900 217 819

Crowd Wise Ingenious Project: Transport Event Report – 6th December 2011

actionforinvolvment — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:59 +0000

It’s been quite a while since I’ve had the time or pleasure to write a newsletter, however brief, so I’m delighted to attach our Report on Crowd Wise Ingenious Transport event Sheffield 061211 for RAE Ingenious funded Transport event.

PLUS a reminder that our Transport event follow-up meeting is 3pm, Thursday 26th January at OneEleven Building, Sheffield Hallam University – building opposite TJ Hughes at Castle Market. Although it’s free, donations appreciated – whatever you want to pay – to help with costs.

This project has opened my eyes to the vital role engineers play in our society as they quietly go about their day-to-day work.

I feel deeply honoured, as a lay person, to have had access to so many influential engineers from all disciplines. I would like to thank you all for giving so unstintingly of your time to support us in delivering this project to the expected standards.

Without engineers we would live in a different world without the luxury of heating, hot clean water, housing, safe rail or road systems, food supplies, fuel, robotics, metals, waste disposal, information or intellectual property to name just a few areas touched on or to be covered at our events – in fact everything we all take for granted.

We’ve had a lot of feedback ranging from an excellent, highly interactive process right through to need to do better – all of it’s been taken on board, in particular:

feedback to involve engineers early on in shaping event questions;
longer lead time between engineer briefing sessions and event delivery;
give more information about project partnerships, relationships, processes and expected outputs at the outset of each event.

A major RAE Ingenious project aim is to raise the profile of engineering among lay people and especially young people.

As you can see from our Transport Event report, copy attached, it is a matter of critical concern for our future survival and economic success that:

so few people are interested in engineering as the means to provide solutions to improve our living standards;
the dearth of women in the engineering professions evidenced by the difficulty in recruiting women engineers for these events;
recruiting young people in to engineering and manufacturing is a major issue;

Our final two events for the RAE Ingenious Project on the Sustainability agenda both run from 1.30pm – 4.30pm for event participants followed by a de-briefing session for event experts until 5.15pm and open to event participants will turn the spotlight on:

Tuesday 14th March: Sustainable Housing – How can we afford to heat our homes?;
Wednesday 29th March: Can Sustainable Manufacturing Kick-Start our Economy?

Online registration for our remaining two RAE Ingenious events going live shortly.

Plastic pollution

actionforinvolvment — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:59:55 +0000

TED lectures on Plastic Pollution and social deprivation it causes worldwide.

TED Lecture: Mike Biddle – We CAN recycle Plastic; Edinburgh October 2011. Less than 10% of plastic trash is recycled – compared to almost 90% of metals because of the massively complicated problem of finding and sorting the different kinds of plastic. Frustrated by this waste, Mike Biddle has developed a cheap and incredibly8 energy efficient plant that can, and does, recycle any kind of plastic. www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle.html

Capt. Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — an endless floating waste of plastic trash. Now he’s drawing attention to the growing, choking problem of plastic debris in our seas. www.algalita.org/index.php

Artist Dianna Cohen, co-founded the Plastic Pollution Coalition and shares tough truths about plastic pollution in the ocean and our lives — and some thoughts on how to free ourselves from the plastic gyre. REFUSE, REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE www.ted.com/talks/dianna_cohen_tough_truths_about_plastic_pollution.html

Van Jones lays out a case against plastic pollution from the perspective of social justice. Because plastic trash, he shows us, hits poor people and poor countries “first and worst,” with consequences we all share no matter where we live and what we earn. At TEDxGPGP, he offers a few powerful ideas to help us reclaim our throwaway planet. www.ted.com/talks/van_jones_the_economic_injustice_of_plastic.html

Sustainable Transport – Event Follow-up Meeting: Thursday 26th January 2012

actionforinvolvment — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:31:21 +0000

EVERYONE WELCOME

Engineering Sustainable Transport

FREE Follow up Meeting

What’s the best way to engineer sustainable transport for Sheffield, our region and beyond in a carbon, pollution and hassle free environment without causing congestion or breaking the bank?

We’ve had awesome feedback for our Sustainable Transport event so I’ve set-up a meeting for you to move this forward and most of our Transport experts will also be able to join us

@

Sheffield Hallam University, Room 11005, OneEleven Building, Arundel Gate, Sheffield S1

3pm – 5.00pm, Thursday 26^th January 2012

Picking up from our Sustainable Transport event, we’ve created space for you to focus on the key Sustainable Transport event outcomes:

Information on:
1. Public and Individual Transport
2. Practicalities of user-friendly transport – without SMART phones!
3. Impact of transport
4. Targeting of information to convince the fringe
5. Pricing
6. Feedback

Integration of systems

Focus on fuel not time

You’ll be able to explore and decide on:

Your priorities and objectives;
How to achieve your goals most effectively;
Who you want to involve;
Develop a strategy of what you want to do next;
Identify available resources to move your plans forward effectively.

Although this FREE meeting also includes free tea and coffee, we’d welcome donations to help with our costs.

actionforinvolvment — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:15:32 +0000

Yay, Tom Lipinski, the award-winning Green Structures is joining our team of experts on housing and retrofitting. Looking forward to a controversial, no messing contribution.

The Green Thing …. So true……………!!

actionforinvolvment — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:15:24 +0000

In the queue at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”

The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment.”

He was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person. Remember: Don’t make old People mad - we dislike being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to put our noses out of joint!

Courtesy of my dear friend, Zisy