Working with young people to take climate action
County in the Community (CITC) use the power of sport, education and training to engage with all members of the community in South East Wales – regardless of age, ethnicity, physical ability or economic status. CITC was established in September 2013, when Newport County AFC gained football league status, and in June 2015 became a registered charity. Through the delivery of their various projects they aim to change lives, inspire participation in sport and physical activity and also improve health and wellbeing, working hard to build greater community cohesion.
CITC came to Egin because they wanted to be more eco-friendly as a charity, wanting to change their practices and include supporting and protecting the environment across their various activities. This included everything from delivering programmes in schools and communities, to how they deal with their waste in the office. One important part of this was through engaging the staff team on climate change and the environment and exploring what actions they can take to be more sustainable. The County in the Community team, especially Deiniol Parselle (School Sports and Eco co-ordinator) bring huge amounts of enthusiasm and positivity to their work and have great potential to inspire the groups and communities they work with.
Over the last year, the group worked with Aimee Parker as their Facilitator. While receiving support through Egin, CITC also had the opportunity to take part in Carbon Literacy Training last year, as well as to showcase their work with partner schools at the Egin Gathering in Pontypridd in May 2024.
The group will be working with Isla Horton over the coming months to explore how they can incorporate environmental education and action into their schools’ programme. The group first met with Isla at the Egin gathering, where she demonstrated to pupils how to use origami techniques to make pots for plants. The group are looking forward to working with Isla and exploring how they can strengthen their education programme and build confidence as a staff team in delivering it.
In the future they would like more training opportunities for their staff to take part in. They believe that the staff play a key role in inspiring themselves, each other and the communities they work with to tackle climate change in their daily lives. They are also aiming to support two eco projects in schools in the next school year.
The group has stated that the support from Aimee has been very helpful, and that she has consistently been available to give them advice: “On behalf of everyone at County in the Community, we would like to thank Egin, and more specifically Aimee Parker, for the support in making our charity a more environmentally friendly organisation. We hope to work more with Egin to develop and improve our projects and practices into the future.”
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