Climate Action Funding Proposal

2nd December 2019

Thurso Community Development Trust working in partnership with Lairg Learning Centre are intending to submit an initial project proposal to the new TNL Climate Action Fund to develop a project across Caithness and Sutherland which aims to change behaviours in our community in order to take action against Climate Change. We will be looking at various options including encouraging Zero Waste, Local Food Growing and Food Waste Minimisation to change behaviours in the face of the Climate Emergency. At this point the application would be for development of a full project as the funding opportunity is in staged options. We feel that Caithness and Sutherland represent an ideal geographic location to develop a project, if we can develop changed behaviours in a rural area with due to our location has a higher carbon footprint than the rest of the UK due to longer delivery distances, we can act as an example to other areas.

In order to develop the project and the funding opportunity we would love to work with other partners, community organisations and communities and wondered if you would be interested in taking part and supporting our funding bid. The process for applications is initially for us to submit an expression of interest by 18th December and from there work on an application. At the moment we are just looking for an expression of interest in being involved and we will be in contact once we have the go ahead to develop further.

To give some background on both organisations, both Thurso Community Development Trust and Lairg Learning Centre are currently funded by the Scottish Government Climate Challenge Fund and both are currently running projects which encourage local food growing and food waste minimisation to educate our communities about the behavioural changes that are needed to mitigate against Climate Change. This project would essentially take this work and scale it up to support organisations in Caithness and Sutherland and the wider full community.

More information on both organisations can be found here:

https://www.thursocdt.co.uk

https://www.lairglearningcentre.org.uk/

Details of the funding opportunity can be found here:

https://www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk/funding/programmes/climate-action-fund

If you could let me know if you are interested in being involved no later than Friday 6th December that would be really helpful to our initial expression of interest to the fund. I've attempted to send to as many organisations as I have contact details for, but please feel free to share this on if there is anyone you can think of who may have an interest or is planning on developing a Climate Action project.

Kind regards,

Joan Lawrie
Thurso Community Development Trust