Lizzie Rumble is a member of the RSPB’s brand-new Community Campaigners Network. She is one of 12 campaigners in her cohort, who are spread all over the UK, from Cardiff to Belfast to Sheffield. Lizzie is based in Richmond, North Yorkshire. Over the last few months, Lizzie and her fellow campaigners have received training from the RSPB to support them in designing and delivering local campaigns during Great Big Green Week 2022. Here, Lizzie tells us about her experience as a Community Campaigner and of delivering her campaign.
Are you considering getting involved in a community campaign in your area? Would you like to know more about what it involves?
Here is a brief overview of my first experience of doing a community campaign with the support of the RSPB.
Campaigning was not something I have considered doing before. I have done fundraising in the past which of course involved some talking about why a charity/cause was important to me, but campaigning felt much more scary.
However, I had reached a point where I wanted to take action to protect nature and our planet, but I wasn’t sure how. I was done with sitting back and waiting for someone else to do it, I wanted to take ownership of my values on nature.
When I heard that the RSPB were looking for volunteers to run a campaign with their support, I guess curiosity to learn more about campaigning and how I could take action led me to wanting to run a campaign. It was also a window of opportunity to connect with like-minded people locally and find out more about the nature in our area. So, I jumped in.
It took me a while to decide on a campaign issue that was heartfelt by myself and that I felt I could easily get others engaged in. That was probably one of the biggest challenges for me. Especially as I was only newly linked up with a small handful of nature loving people in the area. What really inspired me to run this campaign was a walk where my attention was drawn to where I was placing my feet, what I could hear and what I could smell and how good it felt to have my attention right in that moment. It led me to wonder if everyone had this connection, how the world would be and then how could I inspire this to happen. Through sharing this thought with a fellow nature lover the idea developed around pollinators and wildflower meadows and then I was introduced to the Bilberry Bumblebee. A beautiful, unique, mountaineering bee that I had not known but wanted to and wondered if I did would others too?
Image of Bilberry Bee by Nick Owens BBCT
Once I had my campaign issue everything else fell into place. My campaign issue was 2 fold. We have limited information on the populations of pollinators in our area but it is likely we have a rare and endangered species (The Bilberry Bumblebee) and that our pollinators are likely declining with the rest of the UK. I set my campaign aims so that I could engage the whole community.
Campaign Aims:
Setting up the campaign I connected and worked with a team of people from different organisations. This has been great as it has also given me links for future campaigns and projects. Our Parish clerk connected me with Richmondshire Climate Action Partnership who helped with my idea development for the campaign. This led to making links with a bee expert in the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust.
A close friend was involved with a Girl Guiding unit. I spent an evening with them talking about the Bilberry Bumblebee and they helped to create artwork for the campaign and in doing this some of the brownies then came along to the event in Great Big Green Week.
In searching for a venue to run an event I reached out to a local nature reserve, and they hosted the event but also got actively involved providing additional activities on the day with the help of their volunteers. They are also keen to engage as a landowner to have Bilberry Bushes planted on the reserve.
In summary, to make this campaign a reality I did some initial reaching out into the community and local organisatons. This led to creating a small campaign team. We had meetings and email communication to form the campaign and the event. The RSPB campaign training and resources were a great support and I found most of my ideas came to me while out in nature walking.
We held an event at the local nature reserve with lots of family friendly activities and talked to visitors about pollinators, surveying, and the campaign. I put a slideshow up with information on the Bilberry bee and the campaign. We managed to get a few people to register their interest in volunteering with us next year. To promote this event, I used community forums on social media, posters in central places such as supermarkets, a local news group and the social media feeds of the other organisations involved in the campaign.
Running the campaign has been a positive experience as I have been able to connect local people and organisations to protect nature. For me personally it has given me a greater sense of power in how to create change through a campaign by bringing people together.
Through doing this I have learnt that it pays to be brave, take a chance and reach out to other people and that this is a lot easier when it is something you really care about.
I have discovered that the younger generations have great curiosity and connect more easily perhaps than adults to nature with its sense of wonder. One of my favourite parts of my campaign was when I sat down to chat to the Guides about what I was doing and why and they asked some fantastic and challenging questions to answer.
Being part of the community campaigns network throughout my campaign journey has helped with bouncing off ideas and problem solving the challenges with campaigning. Being able to share our progress, successes and hurdles has been invaluable. It has been a learning experience hearing about nature issues in other areas of the UK.
My next steps with this are to look for funding for bilberry bushes and a way of protecting them from grazing livestock and secure agreements with landowners so that we can go ahead and get planting before Spring next year.
I hope that this campaign leads to regular citizen surveys of our nature in our area that helps create changes to protect that nature while increasing community awareness and joy in being in nature. I am writing this blog having just submitted a letter to a loved one in the future through the climate coalition, my niece who is 3 months old.
On a deeper and wider scale, I hope that she is part of a future where humanity can create a living balance where we live in harmony with every being on this planet. Where she sees a cloud of butterflies and hears the sound of buzzing in an oak tree.
Lizzie’s campaign culminated in her event during Great Big Green Week – which has marked an end to the first phase of the Community Campaigners Network. However, we are currently working on setting up the next phase for new and existing campaigners to get involved in. If you want to take action for nature and learn about community campaigning alongside other passionate campaigners like Lizzie, then sign up for our monthly Campaigns Update to keep informed about upcoming recruitment for the network.