What is a Faith Ambassador?
Climate Change is the greatest threat the world faces. This is now not only accepted by society but by our government and internationally. As a response to the growing concern in society, we have initiated a scheme supporting faith communities to take action combating climate change. Faith Ambassadors are volunteers willing to champion environmental sustainability and in particular co2 reduction projects within their faith.
Faith Ambassadors will be supported in their projects through practical assistance, information, advice, resources and training where needed. Our aim is to support those with the commitment and desire to take action on climate change with the means. We believe that local led action by those in the community can achieve real change.
What can I as Faith Ambassador achieve?
You may enter this scheme with a project in mind; to raise recycling in your area, improve green spaces, work towards traffic reduction or help your place of worship install environmental or renewable technologies. We can help and support you in this. If you are unsure of what project you would like to champion within your community then we can help with ideas, helping you find activities for your area.
Some suggestions are;
- – Hosting the Faith and Climate Change exhibition as a way to instigate conversation within your faith community / place of worship.
- – Exhibition can be booked via Maud at Birmingham Friends of the Earth (see contacts)
- – Organise a speaker or workshop for your place of worship.
- – Organise a screening of the film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ with post film discussion. This can work especially well with youth groups and with groups who know little about climate change.
- – Undertake an energy audit of community buildings / places of worship to calculate how much energy you use and to highlight areas where cuts could be made by implementing energy saving measures such as switching to energy saving light bulbs or insulation.
- – Inform your faith community with information of climate change, the effects and the solutions.
- – Find out and publicise public transport links to your place of worship .
- – Organise letter-writing sessions for member of your faith community to local councillors and MPs about climate change to ensure commitments on a local, regional and national level.
What help is available?
This project is about you, your faith community and your place of worship. We want to support the projects that are right for you. We can do this with practical help, providing information on grants available and resources. We can provide training, we can provide time and at times an extra pair of hands to help out. Through the multi faith partnership we can access a wide range of services that could be of benefit to you. We have faith in local led solutions, making sustainable changes on the ground will tackle climate change. How can I make a difference?We are all stewards of the land, we have a responsibility to live on the land respectful of it. This project is enabling us to redress the balance, to reconnect with our environment.We all have a role to play in tackling climate change. Through small scale initiatives we can build a wave of commitment that will lead to a reduction in co2 measures. How long will this project last?Initially this project will run till March 2007. Although we hope that it will continue beyond this period we are currently focusing on activities within this time-frame.Our wish for the Ambassadors scheme is that it will evolve and in time Ambassadors will be able to share and assist each other in their projects. This will enable us to work within our own faith and on an interfaith level.
