Rebound Books win £10,000 grant
Following the success of the Welsh Government’s Sustainable Development Challenge Fund last year, the challenge was set again to businesses, organisations and projects across Wales to bid for £10,000 funding to help reduce Wales’ ecological footprint at an event at the Hay festival, which has become popularly known as the Green Dragons Den. We reported in the last edition of the newsletter that there would be four central themes to the challenge running over four days; these were Clever Stuff, Field to Fork, Home and Hearth and Connecting Communities.
The finale for each day’s competition saw more than 200 people pack the Elmley Foundation Theatre and witness three minute pitches to the Dragons and audience. The applicants then had to endure a cross examination, before the Green Dragons and audience voted for a winner. Here are the four winners who each received £10,000 to develop their ideas –
Rebound Books, a project developed by L’Arche Brecon, a community where adults with and without learning disabilities live and share life together, won the Clever Stuff prize. The project creates recycled notebooks, sketchbooks, diaries or journals from old or discarded books with the original publication interspersed with blank pages.
Food for the future, developed by Blaenau Gwent Council took away the Field to Fork award for their project encouraging Primary and Secondary schools to install allotments, wildlife gardens and waste recycling facilities across the Borough.
Winner of the Home and Hearth competition was the One Million Person Sharing Plan for Wales. Its aim is to help people and communities up and down Wales share existing resources. Everything from bikes, meeting rooms or garden tools will be shared through an online sharing platform creating a collaborative way of consuming goods and services.
The final winner of the week under the Connecting Communities theme was Pots, tubs, troughs and tucker. The Wellbeing Alliance will develop a community scheme to encourage people in Blaenau Gwent to grow their own produce, share skills and come together.