Year of Green Action 2019

The Year of Green Action 2019 connected people of all ages, from all walks of life, with nature and demonstrated how we can all take positive action to improve our environment.

The year-long drive encouraged everyone to get involved in projects that supported nature and improved the natural world in our own gardens, schools or workplaces, and as consumers.

To coincide with this, #iwill, Defra, and a group of 25 environment and youth-sector partners (including us) spearheaded activities to drive a new agenda forward with young people at its heart. This included appointing young ambassadors to drive environmental action in their communities and encouraged environmental volunteering such as litter picking, planting pollinator-friendly flowers or fundraising to maintain or enhance green spaces.

Scout resources

We worked with the Scouts to refresh our 'A million hands' partnership to tackle plastic pollution in our waterways.

We created a set of resources to support Scout groups to plan and lead green social action that had a local impact, and worked towards tackling the global issue of plastic pollution. We wanted to empower young people to take action that will benefit their communities and beyond.

Youth Panel

To coincide with Youth Social Action Day 2019, we launched our first national youth panel. Using the Year of Green Action as a focus, we brought together a group of young people from across the country to put their voices at the centre of our work.

This was an exciting step on our journey to embedding youth leadership and social action in all our work.

The group worked closely with decision-makers and teams across the Trust to shape our youth engagement programmes and acted as ambassadors sharing our key messages with young people and new audiences.

All the youth panel members were passionate about the opportunity, our vision to make life better by water, and brought a range of experience to the group.

The youth panel made a tangible a difference in their communities, across our regions and beyond.