THANK YOU to all the Greener and Cleaner members who helped us with our 1st ever big fundraising effort last October – the fabulous & well attended Preloved & Prosecco Fundraiser for local Valley Primary & Pre-School’s vital Air Cleaning & Re-Greening Project last Autumn!
As a result of the hard work & donations of time & clothing of our members & the local school community we raised about £6k and then helped bring other fantastic Community Stakeholders to the table to help fund the full approx £50k cost of the Air Purifiers for the classrooms & roadside Ivy & tree Green Screening for the length of the school!
Luckily TFL transferred their large donation before Covid struck their finances (thanks to Officer Alexander Baldwin Smith, Cllr Nicola Harmer (Dykes), Officer Stephen Oliver & Cllr Will Harmer for their help in ensuring the council could efficiently process AND plant this at the start of lock down!), Bromley Council’s Community Fund put in another chunk (thanks to local Councillors Cllr Nicola Dykes & Cllr Aisha Vance-Cuthbert for their huge efforts bidding for & securing this!), a wonderful Bromley Friends Of the Earth member, Rob Clark, ran a marathon and raised a truly impressive amount and the Valley PTA matched it plus 50% and, in addition to that, the local Residents Associations (Ravensbourne Valley Residents Association & Shortlands Residents Association) also supported the funding! A truly inspiring Community Effort!
Really great timing given the insane increase in traffic (traffic is at 150% of this time last year in outer London boroughs like ours – pls walk/cycle more where at all possible)!
Thank you to Louise Dartford and the many other local parent Greener and Cleaner members who raised this with us and worked hard to make this a success story! Thanks also to the many members who were not part of that local community but nevertheless wanted to significantly help protect the very young children situated so close to the daily congestion. Thanks also to Sam Samuel for the Edward Ashdale prosecco donation & to pop songstress Gabriella Cilmi for DJing. EXTRA BIG thank you to Emilie MacMullen for her irreplaceable logistics / organisational work!
If any schools, community groups or others want support or advice on projects like this or similar (or different!) do let us know and we can share our experiences & top tips, and support where we can!
THANKS AGAIN FOR HELPING US HELP BETTER PROTECT THE LUNGS OF 500 KIDS & THEIR FAMILIES. XXX
NB Top Tip: We didn’t really know it at the time but Jane Dutton (Mums for Lungs) & Brendan Zappa (Bromley Living Streets) & Jonathan Coulter (Bromley Cyclists) are fantastic fountains of knowledge & resources around air quality, active travel, school streets, road safety, idling, cycling & more (incl flyers etc). Plus the council has an anti-idling campaign with schools support and flyers available. And we have some Greener and Cleaner anti-idling & anti-garden burning flyers/posters too if helpful on the clean air front.