The Great Big Green Week is the largest celebration of action on climate and nature. Ben Margolis, interim director at The Climate Coalition, writes why charities from all sectors should get involved.
The climate crisis has felt more real than ever in the UK recently with temperatures reaching all time highs, emergency services stretched to breaking and farmers, vulnerable populations and many others suffering from the unprecedented heatwave. Yet, for many around the world, the impact of the climate crisis has been tragically real for many years. Amid palpable frustration at the lack of a coordinated and commensurate response from governments around the world, including our own, support for greater government intervention has been strong in recent years.
Last year in the lead-up to COP26, we launched the inaugural Great Big Green Week to encourage the millions of people who we know care passionately about the climate crisis to engage with their communities, with solutions and with their MPs and local representatives.
We were blown away by the response with over 5000 events and more than 200 climate festivals taking place across the UK – and critically with 45% of organisers and 40% of participants reporting that this was the first time they had ever been involved in such an event.
We invite you to think about how your organisation might contribute to making this year’s Great Big Green Week (September 26 – October 2) even bigger, better and more impactful. We know that the climate crisis is also a health crisis, an inequality crisis, a nature crisis and much else and we want to make sure we are connecting the dots between the crises and need your organisations to help us to do so.
Great Big Green week is coordinated by The Climate Coalition, the UK’s largest group of people dedicated to action against climate change. Along with our sister organisations Stop Climate Chaos Cymru and Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, we are a group of over 140 organisations — including the National Trust, Women’s Institute, Oxfam, and RSPB — and 22 million voices strong. We recognise that collaboration allows us to be greater than the sum of our parts and achieve ambitious results.
We campaign to protect the people and places we love that are under threat from climate change, and demand that politicians do what is necessary to ensure a more secure, fairer, greener future.
We know that when we come together and work with one another in our villages and cities, our town halls and our places of worship, we can make meaningful changes. It is by working in coalition and collaboration, celebrating our breadth and diversity, that we will overcome the greatest challenges we face; the impacts of climate change, inequality, and the destruction of the natural world.
Your organisation can get involved in all sorts of ways including encouraging your stakeholders to participate, putting on public-facing activities, promotions or events, promoting existing activities and sharing our content through your own channels in the lead up to, and during, the week itself. You might want to participate in Good News Day on Monday 26 September to celebrate the work you are doing as an organisation to protect nature and our environment. We’ve made it really easy to get involved in the week, with lots of resources available on our campaign website. So we’re sure whatever sector you operate in, there’s a way for you to join in, join us, and tens of thousands of others in stepping up for people, climate and nature.
For us to be successful in our mission of creating a more secure, fairer, greener world for us and future generations to enjoy, we need organisations across the voluntary and charitable sector to mobilise their supporters and power in unison. Climate change and the destruction of the natural world are cross-cutting issues that intersect with the missions of our organisations and the communities we serve. It is incumbent upon us to demonstrate the real and urgent need for the government to step up, and we can do so by leading from the front.
The government needs to follow suit and deliver on their promises to protect us and the next generation. We’re already taking action – now the government needs to do their bit. Visit greatbiggreenweek.com to get involved.
