The Ashden Awards are nationally acknowledged as THE awards for meaningful climate change activity in the UK. As communication on climate change becomes ever more important, Ashden is launching a new category for citizen engagement. CAfS was delighted to be invited to help the awards team to develop the criteria and assessment for this new category, with Phil Davies taking up the challenge.
“If our 20 years of experience in tackling the causes of climate change has shown us anything, it’s that different people get involved in climate actions for different reasons and in different ways,” Phil said. “We certainly don’t have all the answers, but it was exciting to be able to share our insights to help develop the award. We’ve seen first hand how vital it is to approach any individual or community from their starting point and perspective, trying to understand their hopes and fears, and the problem they’re trying to solve. We know that being positive counts, that addressing the present is important, relating to the local and giving people ownership of their decisions.”
We hope the award goes on to inspire and motivate even better engagement on climate change with communities across the UK, sharing successes to help us all improve by learning from each other. (Perhaps we’ll even enter it ourselves in the future!) The new award goes live on 6 January 2021.