News Articles Archive - Page 78 of 153 - Cross River Partnership

Join our next online, interactive learning session on Thursday 10th September, 2pm! Tune in for information on re-energising your business and diversifying in response to COVID-19. We will be joined by Ojay McDonald, Chief Executive of the UK’s Association of Town & City Management, and Louise Abbotts, BID Manager at InStreatham BID, to discuss the steps you can take as a business. This is an opportunity to rethink customer services, consumer habits, digital transformation and the role of the High Street, in the context of the pandemic and climate crisis. We will also be talking about how the CRP Clean Air Villages Directory of companies can support the transition to services that are environmentally as well as financially healthy. Register your place via our Eventbrite page!

Missed our latest LiveShare ‘Keeping our Air Clean: It’s Everyone’s Responsibility’? Watch the whole event here, and see our dedicated tool kit for more information and resources. You can see our full library of LiveShare events on our Videos page.

For more information, please contact CRP Guidance Manager Tomos Joyce.

Cross River Partnership is excited to introduce our first-ever Air Quality Ambassador programme! As part of Clean Air Villages 3, we are working with the City of London Corporation on a community–focused Ambassador programme, which aims to educate, engage and empower City of London residents and employees on everything related to air quality.

The AQ Ambassador programme is open to residents and employees of the City of London Air Quality Focus area, from Monument up to Houndsditch.

Ambassadors will take part in three AQ Training Workshops, where they’ll learn everything from their local air quality status, to its impact on our health and what solutions can be implemented on individual and community levels. AQ Ambassadors will also have one-to-one sessions with a CRP Project Officer to help develop and run their own community based AQ initiative, such as:

A digital AQ education session for community members
Assisting your community centre, religious institution or local community organisations in acting against air pollution
Creating an educational video about the AQ issues – and solutions – in your community
Helping community members pledge actions to reduce their own air pollution footprint
And many more ideas – it’s up to the Ambassador and the needs of the community!

Some key dates for interested applicants to keep in mind:

September 30th – application deadline!
October 5th – Ambassador invitations to be sent
October 12th, week of – Workshop 1
November 9th, week of – Workshop 2
December 1st, week of – Workshop 3

Each workshop will be held remotely and last approximately 2 hours. The week after, Ambassadors will have their one-to-one sessions with the CRP Project Officer to help develop their personal AQ project. This is an exciting opportunity for City of London community members to take an active part in improving the environment and lives of their community. Air Quality Ambassadors are voluntary positions but in return will receive:

Participation in a pilot programme for Cross River Partnership and London’s first-ever Air Quality Ambassador programme.
An opportunity to learn from environmental specialists about global and local air quality issues and the tangible solutions for every individual.
Development of public outreach skills and confidence building through completion of Ambassador goals and objectives.
Invitations to join other CRP events and workshops.
The opportunity to be featured on CRP communication channels and media platforms.
A sense of pride and achievement through volunteering locally to improve the air quality, and subsequently, health of their local community.
Access to the AQ Ambassador digital toolkit!

Are you ready to become an Air Quality Ambassador? Or know someone who would make a great one? The application form can be found here. Don’t forget the application deadline of September 30th, 2020!

For more details, check out the programme summary or get in touch with the AQA Ambassador Programme Officer, Stav Friedman.

Stronger Communities Fund
The final round of Stronger Communities funding will support sport and physical activity projects tackling levels of loneliness and social isolation that have increased due to the COVID-19 lockdown and social distancing measures. Read more and apply.

Back to Business Fund
The Mayor of London‘s £1m Back to Business Fund offers up to £5,000 in match funding to small and independent businesses through the Pay It Forward London crowdfunding platform. Read more and apply.

London Growth Hub’s ‘Grants for SMEs to Access Specialist Support’
The ERDF Grant for SMEs to Access Support will launch in September 2020. Register your interest on the London Growth Hub’s website here.

Tesco’s ‘Bags of Help Covid-19 Communities Fund’
The programme will provide a single payment award of £500 to organisations who are supporting vulnerable groups, as part of their emergency response in supporting local communities. Read more and apply.

Culture at Risk – Business Support Fund
The Mayor of London launched an emergency £2.3m fund to help some of London’s most at risk creative and night time businesses during the COVID-19 outbreak. The targeted fund is designed to help grassroots music and LGBTQ+ venues, creative workspaces and independent cinemas. Read more and apply.

Small Business Grants Fund, the Retail, Hospitality & Leisure Grants Fund and the Discretionary Grants Fund
The Government is closing the above funds on Friday 28th August. See more information here and contact your local council if you think you are eligible.

Grants of between £5,000 and £50,000 are now open to civil society organisations and local authorities to deliver projects across London that will improve and create green spaces, green the built environment, and help adapt to climate change.

Examples could include improving parks, creating community gardens, cleaning up nature reserves and waterways, installing sustainable drainage, planting trees or greening streets! The fund is prioritising projects located in areas of the city with poor access to open space and nature.

DEADLINE for applications is 5pm on Monday 5 October.

We all need to prioritise looking after our own health and wellbeing first so that we are then able to look after loved ones, friends and colleagues.

CRP’s accountable body, Westminster City Council, recognises the value of ensuring that the emotional wellbeing of staff is of utmost importance and have implemented departmental Wellbeing Pioneers as part of the commitment to the Healthy Workplace Charter. The Wellbeing Pioneers are a group of staff who are passionate about health and wellbeing. They are from all areas and levels across the council and champion health and wellbeing in their business areas, helping to plan initiatives, support and deliver activities and signpost colleagues.

The Pioneers have developed dedicated pages on the Council’s intranet providing staff with a wealth of tips, information and support, along with information on Five Ways to Wellbeing. Some of the activities undertaken virtually to date have included bingo, yoga sessions, mindfulness, knitting and craft sessions and staff choir.

For further information please contact CRP’s Carol Quamina

The Totally Thames 2020 programme is now live!

From 1-30th September 2020 the festival is celebrating the River Thames with arts events, active adventures, environmental initiatives, heritage and education programmes. Get involved!

Rivers of the World is teaming up schools and artists from around the world to bring children together, creating art about the rivers they love and at the same time learning about cleaning up our planet.

CRP is proud to have been involved with the festival right from its beginning!

CRP’s latest Thames project, Clean Air Thames, is working to clean up harmful emissions along the river, working with vessel operators, the Port of London Authority, the City of London Corporation and the Mayor of London.

(Image credit: The Ship of Tolerance by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. Produced by the Kabakov Foundation and Art, Action Change in association with Thames Festival Trust)

Clean Air Walking Routes are being developed for each of the village areas. These routes will offer alternative A to B walking journeys that result in reduced exposure to pollutants and some will direct people past places of interest and / or shops.

CRP’s CAV team are speaking with businesses and organisations local to the villages in order to find out how operations have changed since lockdown was imposed in March. The team are also offering advice and guidance on how businesses can save time and money whilst improving local air quality.

In some of the village locations, traffic monitoring devices are being installed which will provide partners with valuable information that can be used by CRP to calculate vehicle emissions. The devices will also monitor pedestrian movements which can provide project partners with valuable information about social distancing.

For further information, please contact CRP’s Kate Fenton: katefenton@crossriverpartnership.org

Join us for CRP’s next online, interactive LiveShare session THIS THURSDAY at 2pm! We will be joined by the London wide Idling Action campaign to discuss the steps you can take as an individual or business to help improve air pollution in your local area. We will also hear from CleanCar who will be sharing their innovative tool informing users of sustainable alternatives to combustion engine vehicles, promoting behaviour change through data collection. Finally, we will cover Cross River Partnership’s Defra-funded Clean Air Villages programme, highlighting the pioneering trials being rolled out across London to help businesses and local authorities operate more sustainably through the use of eco-friendly delivery options.

Register here

As September quickly approaches and children start preparing to return to school, many local authorities across London have been busy implementing School Streets. As a result, the Hackney School Streets Hotline provided by CRP’s Healthy Streets Everyday (HSE) project, has been busier than ever!

The Hackney School Streets Hotline is a free telephone service aimed at helping HSE Partners and London Boroughs to design and implement successful School Streets. In July, the Hotline service was extended and made available to ALL London Boroughs, helping to provide tailored one-to-one support as well as up-to-the-minute, site specific advice from The London Borough of Hackney – a HSE partner who has years of direct ‘on the ground’ experience in implementing School Streets. Since the extension, the hotline service has actively helped 7 Local Authorities with the implementation of school streets, including Haringey, Bromley, Richmond and Brent.

As schools reopen, School Streets will play an important role in enabling social distancing at drop off and pick up times by creating more space outside of schools. The Hotline service, which is available until the 28th of September, can help HSE Partners and other London Boroughs to quickly implement School Streets that facilitate social distancing, support travel to school by walking, cycling or scooting, and that are in line with TfL ’s Streetspace programme.

As the service has been increasingly busy, we encourage booking a 30 minute time slot in advance of the hotline’s weekly Monday operating hours to avoid disappointment.

CRP and its partners are extremely grateful to the Mayor’s Air Quality Fund for making this Schools Streets Hotline Extension possible.

For further information about the service, including how to book a session, please contact CRP Project Manager Fiona Coull – fionacoull@crossriverpartnership.org

Car Free Day will be celebrated on Tuesday 22nd of September 2020 globally and on Sunday 20th September 2020 in London. COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the plans for a number of Car Free Day events around the world, however, there will still be great opportunities to promote walking and cycling and playing outside through digital events this year.

CRP will be hosting a workshop at World Car Free Day London Summit on the possibilities of using low emission freight strategies to encourage car free behaviour. We are excited to share how our partners and communities have been implementing cargo bikes, electric vehicles and consolidating deliveries before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. These shifts are a brilliant way of demonstrating how businesses can react quickly to external factors and implement changes to improve their business operations and air quality in their area.

Whilst our Healthy Streets Everyday partners continue to promote active travel through Streetspace initiatives that improve walking and cycling, some are also implementing school streets that are encouraging and enabling social distancing through the removal of cars.

School Streets will play an important role in enabling social distancing at drop off and pick up times by creating more space outside of schools. It is brilliant to see so many of our HSE partners delivering these initiatives to give more space for children and parents when schools reopen in September.

Archives: News Articles

LiveShare – Re-Energise Your Business: Diversifying in Response to COVID-19

Air Quality Ambassadors – Launching Now!

Funding opportunity updates

Grow Back Greener – the Mayor of London’s new fund NOW OPEN!

It is OK not to be OK

Totally Thames 2020

The Clean Air Villages project pedals forwards

New LiveShare – ‘Keeping Our Air Clean: It’s Everyone’s Responsibility’

Healthy Streets Everyday’s School Streets Hotline is busier than ever!

Celebrating Car Free Day 2020