Featured work

featured projects on home page

Blaenau Gwent Climate Assembly

In March 2021, it will bring together 50 people from the Blaenau Gwent area to address the question:

What should we do in Blaenau Gwent to tackle the climate crisis in a way that is fair and improves living standards for everyone?

The participants will hear evidence, discuss the issues, and produce recommendations for what local public service organisations, communities and individuals can do to address the climate crisis. The recommendations made will be considered by organisations including Blaenau Gwent Council and will help to shape the climate plans of local housing associations.

The Climate Assembly will explore the overarching question through learning about, and discussion of related sub-themes including housing, nature / green space and transport.

Lead Experts will present information on climate change and the sub-themes to provide context for the discussions.

The Assembly is being organised by four housing associations in Blaenau Gwent in collaboration with Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council, Electoral Reform Society, Cynnal Cymru.

A Steering Group has been established to oversee the organisation and format of the Assembly.

Find out more >>

The Carbon Literacy Project

The Carbon Literacy Project offers everyone a day’s worth of Carbon Literacy learning, covering – climate change, carbon footprints, how you can do your bit, and why it’s relevant to you and your audience. The Project divides ‘everyone’ into three distinct audiences – those that live, those that work, and those that study. This allows every citizen to be offered Carbon Literacy learning in a way that has immediate meaning for them.

We have been working with the Carbon Literacy Project since 2017 to help accelerate action on climate change, by providing organisations with the training and support needed to reduce their carbon emissions.

The Project delivers no training directly, but works with a host of people and organisations from all walks of life, that all deliver training that is accredited against the Carbon Literacy Standard. The Project then assesses participant’s and certifies successful candidates with their own uniquely numbered Carbon Literacy certificate.

Due to this ‘crowdsourced’ approach, working with everyone, from all walks of life, The Carbon Literacy Project is globally unique – there is nothing else quite like it anywhere. This was recognised by the United Nations at the UN climate negotiations, COP21, in Paris in 2015, where the Project was awarded TAP100 status, – one of 100 projects worldwide recognised as Transformative Action Programmes, that could materially change the way we deal with climate change.

The Carbon Literacy Project has, from its inception, always been a massive collaborative project. It involves people and organisations from all sectors and walks of life working together and contributing time, materials and funding to advance understanding and action on climate change. The Project is wholly owned by The Carbon Literacy Trust, a registered charity (No 1156722) established in 2013 to take responsibility for The Project in perpetuity, for the public good.

Living Wage for Wales

The Living Wage is an independent movement of businesses, organisations and people who believe a fair day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. The real Living Wage is independently-calculated each year based on what employees and their families need to live. Employers can choose to pay the real Living Wage on a voluntary basis.

Organisations that pay the Living Wage have reported significant improvements in quality of work, reductions in staff absence and turnover, and a stronger corporate reputation.

The real Living Wage across the UK for is £9:50 an hour and £10.85 an hour in London. There are over 5000 Living Wage Employers across the UK with 224 Living Wage employers in Wales.

You can find how to become accredited by visiting our accreditation web page or by visiting the Living Wage Foundation website.

Carbon Literacy Cartrefi Cymru

What is CLCC?

CLCC – Carbon Literacy Cartrefi Cymru, is a consortium of Welsh registered social landlords (RSLs). Consortium members pooled money and resources in order to increase Carbon Literacy within their organisations.

Carbon Literacy is defined as a day’s worth of learning around the causes and consequences of climate change, action you can take on climate change and empowerment to make individual and group actions personally and professionally.

The Carbon Literacy Project has defined the standard of Carbon Literacy and accredits courses and learners.

27 different RSLs from around Wales are a part of the consortium – demonstrating the motivation from the sector to collaborate to create change. The programme will increase the number of Carbon Literacy trainers in Wales from 1 to over 60.

CLCC history

In October 2019 representatives from 16 different RSLs around Wales came together to learn more about The Carbon Literacy Project and hear a proposal to create a Carbon Literacy consortium of RSLs in Wales.

The delegates of this meeting edited the proposal which went back out to all RSLs in Wales. In January 2020 a meeting surrounding this proposal led to the creation of a Carbon Literacy consortium of 27 Welsh RSLs. The consortium was named Carbon Literacy Cartrefi Cymru (CLCC).

Programme

  • February 2020 – Phase I; rounds of Carbon Literacy training for member organisations delivered by Cynnal Cymru.
  • March 2020 – Lockdown. Training continues remotely with a new online course and the whole CLCC programme is moved online. 65 member organisation employees receive training and became Carbon Literate.
  • May 2020 – Phase II; 5 training experts from within the consortium work with Cynnal Cymru and Manchester Metropolitan to develop 5 Carbon Literacy courses for Welsh social housing. One course for board/SLT, one for customer facing staff, one for back office staff, one for technical and assets staff involved with retrofit and one for maintenance staff and subcontractors.
  • October 2020 – Phase III; Each member organisation will have at least 2 members of staff trained as Carbon Literacy trainers by Manchester Metropolitan. They will be trained to deliver the courses developed in Phase II.
  • The future – Phase IIII; Member organisations can use their trainers to deliver Carbon Literacy training internally to all staff and embed Carbon Literacy into their induction process.

Journey of Carbon Literacy

  • Deliver Carbon Literacy course
  • Trainer facilitates achievable but ambitious actions
  • Learner evidence forms are sent to The Carbon Literacy Project
  • The Carbon Literacy Project assesses whether a learner is Carbon Literate based on their evidence form
  • Carbon Literacy Champions within CLCC organisations should follow up on actions
  • Organisational behaviour change on climate change is accelerated

If you would like to know more or get in contact, please email luke@cynnalcymru.com who runs the CLCC secretariat.

Foundational Economy Community of Practice

During 2020-21, Cynnal Cymru has supported a community of practice for organisations receiving funding from the Welsh Government’s Foundational Economy Challenge Fund. Its aim is to share learning and innovation, build relationships and encourage collaboration.

The Challenge Fund aimed to support projects looking to try out new ways to address challenges – some emerging, some age-old – faced by foundational economy businesses or those relying on their services.

These included:

  • the recruitment, retention and skills of the workforce
  • the delivery structures and design of services
  • the recruitment, retention and skills of the workforce
  • the delivery structures and design of services

The aim was to explore a range of solutions that could potentially generate viable, adaptable models that could be scaled up and spread to strengthen local economies and community wealth-building.

Staring in 2019 with an initial 52 projects, it was always expected that some experiments would not succeed and conditions were made even more challenging by the impact of the pandemic.

A community of practice was also however put in place to help capture some of the rich learning and insights generated by all the projects taking part. The examples in the Case studies section of this site  give a flavour of the projects supported by the Fund – their successes, challenges and above all learning, about how best the foundational economy in their area or sector can be supported.

Scroll to Top