community connection

Citizen Science

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forest_school-2.jpg
Source: https://www.naturespath.com/en-us/blog/what-are-forest-schools/

Life is taking me on quite the busy journey at the moment. Raising three kids and work keeps me all too busy. I have however had this topic on my mind for quite some time and finally have decided to sit down and write.  Every day I am reading a terrible statistic and report about the state of our world. Today’s one was about the crazy rate of deforestation. Apparently there is one football field worth of forest lost every second.  With all the football watching going on right now, it should be an easy one to visualise. So let’s repeat that one – slowly. One football field of forest lost. Every second.

As with many reports on the environment, it is very easy to feel hopeless and overwhelmed.  While action to reverse is needed urgently, we need to also look at what is possible in our neck of the woods – excuse the pun.  One of the areas I feel strongly about, is the need to re-connect with nature.  There are many benefits to this, from improved mental health and wellbeing to community connections to re-learning lost skills. It goes without saying that this will lead to improved biodiversity outcomes.

One of the ways to re-connect with nature is through Citizen Science. This essentially means that anyone can be a scientist and that we can all work to help document flora and fauna in our local area.  This helps scientists monitor and track information, and gets the community out and about looking closely at what is in their neighbourhoods.

This participatory approach to science is a great way to get people involved in their local community and a wonderful introduction to science for children.

Many many years ago, I worked on a project called the Willoughby Wildlife Watch project which in essence was a citizen science program. It asked residents to report wildlife that they saw. This was then included in a state-wide Atlas, thereby creating a good baseline and allowing monitoring of wildlife, particularly in urban areas.

Over the years, amateur scientists have become involved in science.  In fact amateur astronomers have made many discoveries including finding a scar on Jupiter and even finding Uranus (William Herschel, 1781).  It’s estimated that these volunteer scientists provide in-kind contributions valued at about $2.5 billion a year! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science).

There are different ways that you can get involved.  You can contact your local Council to see if they have any programs available where you can participate, or you can check out some other organisations like:

While winter might be time where we all want to get indoors – it might also be a really interesting time to be out there checking out plants and animals in your area.

Building community

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What is community and how to do build one? Community can mean different things to different people. It can mean a group of people within a geographic location, or it can mean a group of people with common interests.  Whichever way you look at it, more and more it seems that we’re losing that sense of community connection.

Even me, though I have good contact with a few neighbours, my attempts at building a greater sense of community with the neighbourhood have failed.  My planter boxes on the nature strip have mostly become an extension of my own home garden with only one neighbour taking the odd vegetable every now and then. That one neighbour did also leave me a lovely Christmas gift and card, which was super sweet.

But not one to give up on a challenge, I decided to host a ‘Neighbour Day’ afternoon tea and involve my children.  As I have some elderly neighbours, I thought it would be a good opportunity for my children to meet some of the older folk, and for my neighbours to meet some new people.  You never know when they may need some help and it would be good for them to know that someone’s looking out for them should they need help.

There is a lot of talk about disconnection. In an age where we are more connected than ever through electronic means, the face-to-face connection is sometimes lacking. The reasons for this are varied. Time is usually the main one. I for example have three children, but have some time to think about these things and chat to neighbours when I bump into them because I work part-time.

M cutting

This sense of connection and talking to neighbours and getting to know them is what I want to instil in my children, which is why I wanted to get them as involved as I could in the Neighbour Day event.

My daughter designed a fun invite which she delivered with her brother to some neighbours. The results were a little mixed, we did manage to get a few RSVP’s, but we weren’t overwhelmed with the response.

Delivering

 

We decided to make an afternoon of it anyway. Together we put together a lovely afternoon tea with a few neighbours also contributing. The result was neighbours meeting for the first time and a great afternoon spent between neighbouring children. We talked travel and possums (we all share the possum problem J) and favourite recipes.

afternoon tea

This is something that I’ll definitely try again!

If you want to get involved in your local area, contact your local Council. They usually have a lot of information on local community groups, volunteer opportunities and local events.

Otherwise, host a BBQ or afternoon tea.  The Neighbour Day website has some suggestions too: http://www.neighbourday.org/  they have lots of information, kits and even recipes to share.