News review of the year

MaesNi Environmental group focus: Creating spaces for nature and community wellbeing.

The need to tackle climate change is growing ever more urgent, and with little in the way of top-down actions by national governments helping communities switch to renewable energies, communities are finding ways to do it themselves.

We’ve been taking part in lots of podcasts during the covid-19 – and so have the Invest Local communities. It’s been amazing to hear the stories of what communities have been doing in response to Covid-19. Have a listen and be inspired!

Jess Mead Silvester, Community Development Worker for the Invest Local group MaesNi, writes about the community activity that’s been going on in response to the Coronovirus Crisis.

In Maesgeirchen, Bangor community groups, organisations and individual volunteers worked together quickly to efficiently respond to the Covid-19 crisis.

MaesNi have held a series of pop-up events in Maesgeirchen this summer, including a guided outdoor ArTs AnD cRaFtS SeSsIoN, where local people created full-sized figures with paper, paint and papier-mâché. Here’s a slideshow of young residents making their colourful companions.

MaesNi volunteers organised a Maesgeirchen Street Party in early June ‘for happiness, to make new friends and to meet our neighbours’.

Whilst most of us were winding down for a relaxing Christmas break over December, many volunteers involved with Invest Local were busy organising festive fun in their areas. Here’s how some of the Invest Local communities celebrated Christmas…

Over the summer, several Invest Local communities have taken part in The Big Lunch.

Most of the Invest Local areas are well into the consultation process now, with all of them taking slightly different approaches to the process.

Three more communities have joined the Invest Local programme. Maesgeirchen (Gwynedd), Caerau (Bridgend) and Hubberston and Hakin (Pembrokeshire) are the latest communities to be part of the scheme.