Lead Partner: ruralnet|uk
Description
What is the RCCN?
This 3-year project will raise the awareness of the actions that rural communities can take in response to the climate change challenge. It builds on existing, isolated community action and will support other rural groups who wish to take collective action by providing access to an online panel of experts, good practice toolkits and a mentoring service linked to a small grants programme. RCCN will link up existing groups with nascent ones for peer-to-peer support and knowledge transfer through events, twinning and online.
What will the RCCN achieve? What will be the outcomes?
RCCN aims to support 70 rural communities over 3 years. It will support awareness raising activities; capacity building; networking and facilitation; monitoring and evaluation and project management activity.
It will:
- support advanced ‘zero carbon’ communities to run 15 introductory workshops for other communities who wish to reduce their carbon footprint
- answer around 300 questions via its Experts Online service
- produce and publish 18 toolkits
- provide 210 mentor-days of face to face support (including using the expertise within the network itself)
- distribute around 50 small grants of £5,000 each
- participate in 18 rural/third sector events to promote a collective approach to carbon reduction
- support 12 ‘seeing is believing’ exchanges
- prepare and publish up to 35 case studies of collective approaches to climate change using traditional and new media (online video etc)
- reduce carbon emissions by an estimated 125,000 tonnes over 3 years. This has a market value of approximately £633,000
It will make the general public more aware of collective action for climate change. It will help those with an interest take the first steps towards effective action. I will help established groups by exposing them to new ideas and paying them to: act as mentors to other groups; act as online experts and host events and visits.
What is the scope of the RCCN?
RCCN is a rural initiative and seeks to be UK-wide. However, this will depend on the sources of funding support it receives.Contact Details
Simon Berryruralnet|uk National Rural Enterprise CentreStoneleigh Park
Kenilworth
Warwickshire
CV8 2RR t 0845 1300 411enquiries@ruralnetuk.org
Website: http://ruralnet.typepad.com/rccn/