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.
The Award-winning Carbon Literacy Project aims to ensure that every citizen receives at least one day’s worth of learning so that they understand the links between human activity and climate change while empowering individuals, communities and organisations to take action to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Official partner of the Carbon Literacy Project in Wales
Cynnal Cymru is the official partner of the Carbon Literacy Project in Wales and our principal trainer, Rhodri Thomas, was also the first resident Welsh certified Carbon Literacy trainer in Wales. To date he has trained over 450 people and has seen the concept take hold across Wales.
Our achievements to date include:
Training the Sustainable Development forum of Museum Wales, supporting initial efforts by the whole museum sector to develop bespoke Carbon Literacy training.
Co-founding Carbon Literacy Cartrefi Cymru – a consortium of twenty seven housing associations and overseeing the training of around 140 staff including a ‘Train the Trainer’ programme as well as the development of a dedicated Carbon Literacy course for the social housing sector. Our partners in the consortium are launching a cascade of peer to peer training using their own course.
Funded by National Resources Wales, we worked with Manchester Metropolitan University and Great Places Housing group to train over 200 leaders and influencers from the organisations that make up the five Gwent Public Service Boards.
Trained the whole cabinet and executive management team of Newport City Council.
Developed an introduction to climate change e-learning course for Denbighshire County Council staff that will accompany their Carbon Literacy training.
Designed a Carbon Literacy for Engineers course in collaboration with the Flexis programme.
Trained and supported Cardiff Council colleagues and cabinet members enabling them to apply for the Bronze Carbon Literacy Organisation accreditation.
Regularly provide training for staff at The National Lottery
Trained the environmental champions of Sinclair Group
Continue to run monthly open courses online for people from all over the world.
We are aiming to develop Carbon Literacy courses for new sectors such as finance and law. This September we launch our ‘Train The Trainer’ course to enable people to run their own courses and an e-learn “introduction to Climate Change” that will support an organisation’s Carbon Literacy programme.
The Carbon Literacy Project
The Carbon Literacy 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.
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.
Cynnal Cymru works in partnership with the Living Wage Foundation and other leading organisations in Wales to support employers with accreditation and work towards achieving the Living Wage for all workers in Wales.
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 new Living Wage for Wales website:
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.
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.
