Hello and welcome to The Compost Bin. I'm Compostwoman and I live with my family in rural Herefordshire. We have nearly four acres of garden and woodland, all managed organically and to Permaculture principles, which we share with Chickens, Cats and assorted wildlife. We also grow a lot of our own food, run courses in all sorts of things and make a lot of compost!

I am a Master Composter and have spent more than a decade as a volunteer Community Compost adviser with Garden Organic and my local Council.
I'm a self employed Environmental Educator so I run workshops and events where I talk about compost, veg growing, chicken keeping, cooking, preserving and sustainable living. I also run crafts workshops and Forest School/outdoor play sessions in our wood.

We try to live a more self sufficient lifestyle here, as best we can, while still having a comfortable life and lots of fun.


To learn more about us click on the About Compostwoman tab and remember to click on the photos to make them full size!


Saturday 12 January 2013

h.Energy Saver volunteer facilitator training.

I spent yesterday (Fri) doing this training, funded by Herefordshire New Leaf  as part of a project to actively engage Herefordshire residents in their own long-term household and personal energy descent plans.

The training has equipped me, and other people from around the county as h.Energy Savers, to work with small groups of 5 - 6 local people (friends, neighbours, community members) in order to start to address the energy efficiency needs of our households.

 The training was free of charge, and was provided by Hal Gillmore and Mary Popham of Transition Town Totnes. 


The h.Energy Savers training is based  on an adaptation of a proven, award-winning peer-to-peer model developed by Transition Town Totnes where groups of friends and neighbours meet every few weeks,  with a practical workbook to help seed ideas,  to make easy changes in how they use energy, water, food, packaging and transport.  

I help to get things going in my neighbourhood and go to the meetings to give any support needed as the group works through ideas from the workbook  but it is NOT my meeting and the workbook is NOT a text book which has to be followed to the letter but  more of a general guide, full of good ideas.  I like that :-)

As the h.Energy Savers website says
Previous experience suggests that householders working together in this way will save an average of £570 per annum and reduce carbon emissions by 1.3tonnes, whilst learning more about issues such as water use, waste, transport and food.

In addition to this the project hopes to generate up to 250 home energy assessments, carried out by accredited Green Deal Assessors. These homes will then be regarded as 'Green Deal Ready' - i.e. eligible for finance to support their recommended energy efficiency measures once the Green Deal provider network locally is established (work to develop this network is continuing alongside the h.Energy Savers project).

I know this pattern of engagement works as it is how the Master Composter and Master Gardener schemes work and I know they work really well!

I really believe we need to be building more sharing and resilient communities around us all  as the impact of Peak Oil and other issues begin to really hit home. I already try to help with this as a Master Gardener and Master Composter and the other things I try to do and this looks like a good way as well.


I really enjoyed the day of training ( although it was a very long  and tiring day's work!)  I am very excited to be a part of this.

Watch this space!

1 comment:

  1. Sounds interesting, I guess the only trouble is if you set something up and pople move on. Well done for being a part of it though

    ReplyDelete

Hello! Thank you for reading my blog and for commenting. I try to reply as quickly as I can and I really appreciate your interest in my life and doings here in The Compost Bin.

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