Climate change is affecting us all
Our cities are getting wetter and everyday items are more expensive as the impact unfolds across the world.
Beginning on August 7th, Govanhill Housing Association and Make Do and Grow joined our City Change Makers programme, collaborating with Glasgow City Council’s Centre for Civic Innovation, C40 Cities and the Council’s Sustainability team and help us reduce environmental impact in Glasgow while improving wellbeing with twenty local people.
To try and understand how the city might support people in Glasgow to better respond to climate change, City Change Makers is an innovative programme that will guide participants through the steps required to turn their ideas for local climate action into reality.
Who we're working with
The two organisations will bolster their teams with 10 local residents to develop ideas, test them out and implement them for the benefit of their respective neighbourhoods. Local residents will shape the eventual ideas with their lived experience of their area so that they serve the needs and interests of the community.
Working in partnership with The Centre for Civic Innovation, participants will develop skills in creative problem-solving, research, communication, collaboration and build resilience in them as individuals and the wider community.
Community organisations from Calton, Govan and Southside Central were invited to apply to the programme with a group of citizens. CCI assessed applications with a selection panel including climate and community action experts to consider the strength of each category within the application. Govanhill Housing Association and Make Do and Grow demonstrated their potential to create change through the City Change Makers from their experience, ideas and impact they could make locally.
Govanhill Housing Association is a community-controlled social landlord operating in the Govanhill and Merrylee neighbourhoods of Glasgow.
Make Do and Grow is a not-for-profit social enterprise based in Govan who exist to support local families, develop creativity and encourage reuse practices.
Why?
In Glasgow, our Climate Plan outlines an ambition to reach Net Zero Carbon by 2030. To meet this goal, City Change Makers will work with local people and organisations to scale the good things they are already doing, test new ways of tackling climate change, and build capacity at a local level.
The Centre for Civic Innovation has been listening to, and learning from, people across Glasgow’s neighbourhoods to better understand the challenges they face today. We work with people and learn from their experiences to help co-design a future Glasgow where communities can thrive and people can be proud. We believe that creating positive change requires ground-up solutions, especially when it comes to complex issues like climate change, that impact people’s everyday lives.
So that we can work quickly and efficiently, we will be working at a small scale initially, but our goal will be to deliver impactful projects at a local level that help shape policy and advocate for citywide change to help Glasgow meet its climate targets and become a more resilient and equitable city.
If you have any questions check our Frequently Asked Questions
To facilitate this process, and bridge this gap between new action and the inertias of existing culture and rules, means we need intermediaries, champions, change agents, facilitators, and opinion leaders. In short, the kind of individuals who can influence other practitioners towards best practice, helping them to make sense of codified information and navigate through different organisational contexts.