Report

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Brewery House, High Street, Ketton, Stamford, PE9 3TA UK

Travel Days – October 16 and 19

Meeting Days – October 17,18

 

Participants

Adam Cade,UK

Mary Cade, UK

Manuel de la Puerta Salazar, ES

Elena Zapata, ES

Sérgio Manuel Godinho, PO

Margarida Monteiro, PO

Michal Orzechowski, PL

Wojciech Kedziora, PL

 

Visitors

Hannah Keeley, Nene Park Trust

Lorienne Whittle, The Woodland Trust

Patrick Candler, Sherwood Forest Trust

 

Youth for Trees

means trees for their future

 

Aim - Introductions, roles, rights and responsibilities of partners, communication and promotion.

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Key agenda items

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• Getting to know each other.

• Collaborative learning for partners in use of communication tools - Google Drive and Skype.

• Planning of website and social media.

• Discussion, re-drafting and signing of Partnership Agreement.

• Agreement on logo, press release and initial promotion, with Erasmus acknowledgement.

• Confirm budget and partner evidence sheet for Mobility Tool.

• Partner presentations of previous related activities and good practices, Local team presentation and short visit to local woodlands.

 

Throughout the meeting we focused on our experiences and interests in youth engagement in campaigning and making/ joining enterprises, and tried to keep the administration to a minimum.

 

• Elena introduced herself as volunteer for Iroko and a student of environmental sciences.

• Manuel is also a volunteer with Iroko as well as a professional gardener, forester and environmental educator. He has set up his own environmental association and set up a voluntary agreements on biodiversity with a landowner. He has also been involved with Iroko's Climate Forests project and campaigned about reforestation.

• Michal is Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Forestry at SGGW and has set up the Young People in European Forests (YPEF) contest about forests and forestry His specialism is spatial management of forests. He is also involved with the Forest Friends Association.

• Wojciech is a member of staff in the Faculty of Forestry at SGGW, having completed his pHD. He is also involved with the Forest Students Scientific Association.

• Margarida helps manage environmental education projects and activities. She is one of two staff with ASPEA. It also has two staff at the Aveiro rural centre, and about four volunteers.

• Sergio is a volunteer with ASPEA and a professional forestry educator based in the botanic gardens and local forests around Lisbon.

• Mary is a volunteer with Susted and a former biology teacher, running a school green group. She now runs courses in tree fruit processing and organises annual one world events on climate change etc.

• Adam is Director of Susted and also Chairman of the Stamford Community Orchard Group. He manages a small tree nursery and orchard and is also one of 3,000 village Tree Wardens around the UK.

 

 

Woodland walk

The meeting started with a walk to see some local trees and woodlands. Brewery House garden has a wide range of native trees, a small tree nursery and an orchard with local varieties of apples. The walk took us through Ketton Quarry nature reserve which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, famous for its limestone grassland and beechwood. We also saw the extensive new tree planting on the fringes of the local cement works quarry.

 

Project management

Our first task was to look at the application, agreements and finance. We agreed to store all project files in Google Drive folders that used the Erasmus + terms in the application - PMI, TPM, IO, LTTA, ME. We also looked at the grant agreement and its requirements for reporting. The draft Partnership Agreement was edited and agreed by all partners. The responsibilities of each partner and evidence for the final project report was explained by the Coordinator. This was mainly evidence of all travel expenses and signed lists of participants for meetings (for TPMs and the LTTA) and timesheets and employment evidence (for the IO). All the tasks by participants and partners were recorded in an Action Plan which was then added to Google Drive as a running agenda for the next monthly Skype calls.

 

Project promotion

We then looked at the design of some of the project results and the promotion of the project. A range of possible project logos and straplines were designed, as well as an initial press release. The designs of the case studies and Guides was sketched on paper. The website and social media platforms were also discussed. It was agreed that we should launch the project in early January when the website, social media, press release, logos and database of contacts are all in place.

 

We took some group photos and then decided to produce a video of each participant introducing themselves and saying to camera why they valued trees. As a media activity this proved challenging for all of us as we thought hard about why we personally wanted to do this project.

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We finished the evening with a meal and drinks at the All Saints Brewery (www.allsaintsbrewery.co.uk), Stamford, where they brewed their own organic beers and soft drinks and provided us with a hearty and typical English meal.

 

Presentations

The next day started with a presentation of the Moments with Trees Project by Hannah Keeley, Nene Park Trust. She described the many ways in which local businesses, schools and community groups had been introduced to the trees and woodlands of Nene Park on the fringes of Peterborough City. Hannah showed how important it was to evaluate and record the personalities and activities throughout the project period.

 

Lorienne Whittle, from The Woodland Trust, presented her phenology project called Nature’s Calendar. It showed how citizen science involving 20 years of painstaking and regular recording of trees by thousands of people, was convincing evidence of seasonal shifts, most probably due to climate change.

 

Patrick Candler, the Chief Executive of The Sherwood Forest Trust, gave us a presentation about the collaborative work of the Trust. It works in partnership with a wide range of organisations involved with tourism, recreation, education, land and conservation management and forestry. It convincingly showed how forests were more than just a collection of old trees. They had meanings and value for so many people and industries in so many ways. Patrick suggested that we contact Hugh Dorrington at Aveland Trees in terms of the staff training event and tree nurseries.

 

Presentations were also given by each of the partner organisations. We also introduced introduced the associated partners of each partner organisation. Unfortunately the skype call to Tree Sparks and Students for Trees did not work. Audio recordings were made of all the presentations, as well as short videoclips of the three guest speakers who were asked to also say to camera why they personally valued trees.

 

Campaigns

We discussed tree and forest campaigns around the world and especially in Europe. It was recognised that tree planting was now a vital part of the solution to mitigating climate change, especially since the September 2019 publication of the Crowther Report by the Crowther Lab at Zurich University. These include the UN Trillion Tree Campaign, the Australian Billion Tree Campaign, The Friends of the Earth UK's Trees Petition and Woodland Trust's Big Climate Fight Back.

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In Portugal the post office sells tree planting kits with a tree. There is a national campaign to plant a tree each month. There are also campaigns to protect the Cork Oak forests and concerns about more mass planting of Eucalyptus and the risk of wildfires. In Poland the State Forests encourage recycling of electronic waste. The Ecosia search engine based in Berlin donates 80% or more of its profits to nonprofit organizations that focus on reforestation. According to their website, as of 3 November 2019, the search engine had been responsible for the planting of more than 73 million trees. A tree is planted for every 45 searches.

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Forest definitions

We discussed how forests or woodlands are defined in each country as there did not seem to be a universal standard. The UN describes a forest as 0.5 hectares or more but each partner country seemed to use different measures. Michal showed us the Polish geoportal website for mapping forests and Manuel showed us the interactive Corredor geoportal website that mapped Spanish forests. There is an EC Directive called Inspire that has geoportal covering European forests.

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We concluded the meeting with a visit to the local community orchard in Ketton village and then a review of the Action Plan and written evaluation of the meeting. All of us then retired to the Northwick Arms next door to Brewery House having concluded that this would be a good base for the staff training event next September. After an excellent meal and drinks some of us joined the musicians and dancers in the hall at the back of the pub whilst they played and danced to some traditional French music.

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Contributions were invited for the Y4T Google Calendar which will be added to the website.

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