Partners in Action: helping people across the nations to access nature

A Rocha UK, and our 46 Partner in Action sites, including our two reserves, are on a mission to help all people to access nature:

-Partner in Action, Hugh’s Meadow Nature Reserve welcomes school aged children, by arrangement, to join in with conservation and learn about nature in their local area. The school parties have helped to plant trees, put up nest boxes and record species. Monitoring of the wild areas has revealed around 27 species of birds living on the reserve and over fifty species of moths including a first recorded for County Antrim. More than 120 species of plants have been recorded.

-A Rocha UK’s Foxearth Meadows team regularly welcomes The Bridge Project, a local Christian-based club for adults with learning disabilities, to our reserve on the Essex/Suffolk border. Over the last two years, the team has also facilitated three-day field visits over the Easter break for children from the Christian Fellowship School in Liverpool.

– Partner in Action, Aldermoor Community Farm in Southampton, hosts fortnightly half-day sessions for home-educated children. The sessions weave together growing, farm work, animal care, nature-based crafts, life skills, mindful emotional regulation and practical literacy, numeracy and science.

Image: A Rocha UK’s Wolf Fields Urban Nature Reserve, inlcludes raised beds with with wheelchair access and a sensory garden.

-Partner in Action, Jubilee Farm, situated on the Glynn River near Larne in Northern Ireland, holds a weekly work party for asylum seekers and refugees. Nigerian-born Sunny Oyem said, ‘Jubilee Farm has given me a new hope for my future, and a new life’. Sunny’s story inspired hope on BBC Newsline. Read Sunny’s story here.

-Partner in Action, Monkton Combe school received lots of positive student feedback from their ‘Sustainability & Wellbeing Day’ for all the senior school pupils. The day included gardening and 16 stations, each with posters and small activities on sustainability themes such as sustainable fashion, food production, climate politics, carbon footprints and environmental stewardship. The Day’s main aim was to educate the pupils on the current environmental challenges, and what efforts are already being made to combat them. The pupils were also given ideas on how to take action to live more sustainably in their own lives. It was a successful day with lots of positive student feedback.