This project aims to provide communities in highly urbanised areas of Swansea with the advice and support they need to help nature on their doorstep.

My interest in nature and the outdoors drove me to study BSc Biological Sciences (Zoology) at Cardiff University, with a Professional Training Year spent working on research projects at the Danau Girang Field Centre in Sabah, Borneo. In October 2021 I graduated from an MSc in Conservation and Biodiversity from the University of Exeter’s Cornwall campus, where I spent my time learning about conserving our wildlife in the face of the climate and biodiversity crises, as well as spending lots of time swimming in the sea! After graduating I volunteered with the Herefordshire Wildlife Trust on their Ice Age Ponds Project, helping to develop Pond Champion packs to enable communities to stay connected to these habitats and continue to protect and advocate for these areas even after the project ended. Having really enjoyed working with the Wildlife Trust I am really excited to now be back in Wales as part of the WTSWW team and am looking forward to getting stuck into the Nextdoor Nature Project.

Thanks to funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Nextdoor Nature will build on #TeamWilder to work towards a more community organizing based approach as opposed to more traditional engagement. This will hopefully result in longer-lasting action as we will provide communities with the training and resources they need to take action for nature themselves, in their local area. Project actions could include: enhancing existing local greenspaces, establishing new green corridors in areas of nature deprivation, rewilding school grounds, or naturalising highly urbanised or unused areas - but we want this change to be driven by the individual needs of each community that gets involved! By giving communities the tools to decide what happens, we hope to drive sustainable change that continues after the Nextdoor Nature Project ends. We hope that by shifting to a community organizing approach we can create a network of people working towards our goals for nature and will have more people working towards conserving biodiversity and helping to mitigate the climate emergency!

I am looking forward to working closely with communities in Swansea to find out what we can do to help empower people to take action for nature, working towards the Wildlife Trusts' goal to have 1 in 4 people taking positive action for nature by 2030.

If you are interested in the project, you are welcome to get in touch via the project Facebook, linked here.

- Lil, Community Organising Officer