We took the opportunity at our first meeting of 2011 to take a look back at what we've been doing for the last 12 months - and what a year it was!
January - March was a very busy time for our network. Whilst trying our best to contribute to the Cut Trident campaign, most of our time was taken up by a rather presing local issue. UK Coal had just been granted permission by the Secretary of State to mine 900,000 tonnes of coal from an area of outstanding natural beauty in the Shropshire Hills, and we intended to make our opinions on new coal well heard. The winter months were filled with banner drops and monitoring of the prospective site and were very busy times. Unfortunately work has since started on site and coal is now being extracted, Huntington Lane protest camp is still there, and will soon be celebrating it's first birthday!
April saw the launch of our fantastic campaign against Nestles destruction of the Indonesian rainforest in persuit of palm oil. This involved not only Greenpeace's wonderful viral video, which received 1.5 million views, but also campaigning on our streets. We asked members of the public to pose with our orangutan 'face boards' displaying their messages to Nestle. This campaign was an overwhelming success, forcing Nestle to promise to cease their destructive practices.
May brought us the BP tar sands campaign, which we really threw ourselves into! We reached new heights when we climbed The Wrekin to ask members of the public to take apart the 'petals' of BPs logo, to reveal the destruction of the Canadian boreal forest that lay beneath, and also to add their petal to our 'no tar sands' message for BP.
June was definitely a highlight for most of our network! We delivered our No Tar Sands message directly to BPs door over the next two months; first we took part in a national day of action where numerous Greenpeace networks across the country including ourselves, took the posters we had completed over the pervious weeks street campaigning to BPs local forecourts. Not only that but three of us were lucky enough to be able to volunteer on the Greenpeace field at a gloriously sunny Glastonbury festival!
July. We were invited along with other networks, to deliver our posters personally to BPs head office in London. We had such good timing that we delivered our posters on the very same day that Greenpeace shut down nearly 50 BP forecourts around London!
August and time for our festival fun to continue! We were asked if we would like a stall at Farmer Phil's festival, a popular local music festival in the Shropshire Hills. We alongside members of other networks (including Stratford and North Wales) continued to spread the word about tar sands and took the chance to raise some funds. After all, as Greenpeace doesn't take donations from corporations or political parties, it relies on donations from individuals to do the wonderful things it does. We raised some cash and even secured a couple of regular financial supporters - thank you to everyone who contributed and all our financial supporters - we love you!
September and October was a busy period for our network. With Go Beyond Oil teaser activities, a trip to Stratford College to help out the new Stratford Network at the Freshers fayre, a number of Go Beyond Oil street stalls, NVDA training and the West regional skillshare - by the time November arrived I think we were all ready for a break!
November saw Katie heading off to Canonbury Villas to take part in lobbying training. This was perfect timing as our network had secured appointments with both MPs for Telford & Wrekin, David Wright and Mark Pritchard, to discuss our Go Beyond Oil campaign and hand in the postcards we had collected throughout our street campaigning. We also decided at our November meeting to take a break in December!
December came around quickly and saw us taking part in research into supermarket tinned tuna (more on this coming soon!) and also our brilliant christmas social, some completely non-violent laser tag! It was an excellent way to wrap up the year and was just what we needed to recharge our batteries. We celebrated our successes over a few beverages and went about enjoying the festive period.
Now it's onwards and upwards for the next twelve months and we can't wait ot see what the new year has in store for us - bring on 2011!
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