About Us

What is Richmond Environment Network?

Richmond Environment Network (REN) is a multi award-winning* umbrella body formed by the partnership of Environment Trust for Richmond upon Thames, BTCV (Richmond upon Thames office) and the Thames Landscape Strategy.

REN works in a similar way to a council for voluntary service (infrastructure body within the voluntary/charity sector) but solely works to support environmental groups and organisations as well as environmental projects in schools. Our work sees us provide support and development, networking and a representation role. We receive funding from a variety of sources, including a grant from the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames council through their Key Strategic Organisation programme in addtition to funding from the Thames Community Foundation and City Bridge Trust via partnership and shared post with the Environment Trust for Richmond upon Thames. In addition to this funding we also receive donations in kind such as through volunteering or prop bono work from other sources. We also seek to develop new projects and areas work to support our aims in supporting the development of our sector and its individual groups.

Our work and projects support the development of environmental and sustainable thinking and practice in the borough. This consists of the following:

Supporting local environmental groups, organisations and environmental projects in schools, helping them to achieve their aims
Engaging the public to inform and to encourage debate around topical environmental and sustainability issues
Supporting the wider voluntary and community sector, local business and schools develop sound environmental policies and practices aimed at the reduction of waste and the improved use of resources.

REN was conceived in August 2004 upon appointment of a full time co-ordinator. In the early stages of our development we mainly worked to support local environmental groups with the emphasis on those groups focused on local parks and gardens maintaining them through the use of volunteers. We also had limited scope informing the public of this work and promoting opportunities to engage them into volunteering.

The focus of our work and remit was to change in a succession of mergers in 2007. In the Spring Sustainability Action Richmond (SustAR) (previously known as Richmond Environment Information Centre) became part of REN and provided a shift in our focus to cover sustainability and also working directly to the public/residents. SustAR had three projects; Zero Waste Intiative (ZWIN) supports voluntary groups and organisations as well as schools to become more sustainable in their operations, the Sustainability Briefing Papers provide simple to understand information on a number of sustainability topics, in particular information on renewables energy technologies suitable for domestic properties and lastly the Environmental Forum which provides a platform for the public to learn and debate topical environmental issues of the day.

In the Autumn of 2007 Richmond's LA21 Group merged into REN to provide a more consistent approach to the borough's environmental and sustainability voluntary and community sector. The merger brought the LA21 Group's public meetings - the LA21 Quarterly Meetings - into REN and this was amalgamated with the Environmental Forum that came from the previous merger with SustAR.

* Winner of the Good Practice Award in the Richmond Council for Voluntary Service, Community Awards 2006
* Winner of the Green Trailblazer Award for Group/Project in the Green Guardian Awards 2007
* Winner of the Highly Commended Award for our ZWIN project for Group/Project in the Green Guardian Awards 2007

Our specific aims

1. To improve access to environmental activities
By providing a one-stop shop for environmental information in the borough.

2. To improve capacity of local environmental and sustainability groups
By supporting the borough’s groups, organisations and individuals working in the environmental voluntary sector.

3. To enable cross-sector and partnership activity to benefit the environment
By facilitating local environmental groups, organisations and individuals to work in partnership and with groups from other sectors (e.g. youth, disability and health) to build a more sustainable sector.

4. To continuously review and improve the service delivery of REN
By encouraging feedback and tailoring our service to suit the needs of users.

What do we do?

To achieve our objective, we provide this continually updated website (with our news updates being on the Environmental News page), as well as the following services:

For individuals

Listings of environmental activities and events on our Events Calendar on behalf of local groups*
Listings of environmental activities and events in the local press on behalf of local groups
A listing of all local environmental groups in our Groups Database including pages on their behalf, providing further detail on their activities
For those that don't have easy access to the Internet we can also provide this information over the phone~
You can meet with us face to face at local fairs and other events
Come along to our Environmental Forum (LA21), where we encourage debate on environmental issues. Each meeting has its own theme. The forums are produced in partnership with other local groups.
Signposting to other sources of environmental/sustainability information
Our Sustainability Publications provide information on a number of sutainability matters.

For local groups, organisations and schools

Assistance with the formation of new environmental groups in the borough
Your group being listed in our Groups Database to publicise your group and work*
Web page/s hosted for local environmental groups free of charge on our site*
Listings of environmental activities and events on our Events Calendar to recruit interest and potential volunteers*
Listings of local groups environmental activities and events in the local press to recruit interest and potential volunteers
A telephone information and referral service for groups and for people intersted in volunteering with the groups
Attendance at local fairs to promote participation in environmental activities on behalf of local groups
Our Environmental Groups' Forum (previously called the Open Spaces Forum) for local groups to enable effective communication and sharing of good practice between the groups, REN and the council
Dissemination of training and funding information and advice for local groups
Support for groups with funding applications
Signposting to other sources of information
Assistance for local environmental groups for their workdays/activities by fully trained leaders whom are First Aid at Work certified
Promotion of and support in working towards the Guidelines for Volunteers and Voluntary Groups working in the Environment, covering health and safety, insurance, first aid and risk assessment and other good practice guidance for groups carrying out volunteer workdays
Links to local schools and youth groups and developing young person led activities
Links to our schools officer, who supports local schools to develop environmental projects/programmes/clubs and share good practice between schools through our Schools Environmental Forum and network with local environmental practitioners/educators who want to link with local schools
Our Zero Waste Initiative (ZWIN) project carries out environmental audits of buildings for schools & voluntary and community groups. ZWIN also has experience of working with businesses
Representation of the environmental voluntary and community sector to the Green Richmond Partnership and the Voluntary Sector Forum (both sub groups of the Richmond Local Strategic Partnership)
Our Environmental Forum provides an opportunity for residents to engage into local environmental debate, whilst also offering an opportunity for local groups to work with us to put on each Forum. Local groups also have the opportunity to put displays/tables at the Forums

*our website is currently receiving over 9,000 visits or 43,000 hits per month with over 3,000 documents being downloaded.

~ this service is only available when there is somebody in our office to take your call.

In 2008

In 2008 our work will continue to deliver our exitsing work and projects with a focus on; increasing our work and support service with schools through increasing our capacity (staff and finances), community development work in the fives areas within the borough that are described as being 'areas of relative disadvantage' focusing on developing community allotments and lastly increasing our outreach and engagement (and that of our sector) to audiences we typically aren't reaching through social networking websites, public meetings and events and organising social activities. We are also looking to expand through addtional capacity our ZWIN Zero Waste Initiative project to increase our support to the entire local voluntary and community sector and local schools to reduce their energy consumption & waste and the improved use of resources and to develop sound environmental policies thus reducing their operating costs.