3 days to change – Coo Park United
The 2024 Seed Grant awarded to Coo Park United was used to host “3 days to change”. This event included a wide variety of activities centered around climate awareness and community engagement.
“Coo Park United was established in 2015 to address the needs of young people and families living in the Langlees and Bainsford area of Falkirk. The area is the largest SIMD area of Falkirk, and identified issues are young people unable to access sporting and wellbeing opportunities due to cost, and the location of opportunities offered in the wider Falkirk area. We provide sport opportunities to (disadvantaged) children between 3 to 16 years of age.”
“Our current activities include running and managing a Community Growing Area, weekly well-being and health activities for all ages, and tree planting and wildflower planting year-round in partnership with TCV Scotland.”
“We ran activities for all ages over 3 days starting Friday 22 March till Sunday 24th March. There were 4-hour drop-in sessions where participants took part in climate-friendly activities and plant-based food.”
“We worked with the following groups who are supportive of our project: Bainsford War memorial Association, Friends of Dawson Park, and Grahamston Football Club.”
“The activities were creating art using recycled materials, food making demonstrations around plant-based recipes, and planting using organic seeds and potatoes in peat free soil. Throughout the days, climate awareness films were shown on the screens and promotional materials were available.”
“Our activities were a great success, and highlights include making 200 plant pots out of used plastic bottles, and 40 stick art picture frames from fallen twigs and branches. We also planted 200 organic seed potatoes and 150 organic onion bulbs.”
“People tried plant-based food like chickpea curry, vegetarian Paella, mixed bean stew and lots of different rice dishes, and took away the recipe cards.”
“We had people participate from Africa, eastern European and Asian countries who all live in our community. They gave a perspective of climate change in their home countries, which added to the wider more interesting conversation around the subject, as we only tend to look at it from our own local perspective.”
“The project reached over 80 people, and in all we believe that participants of all ages learned and tried things they would not have before. Most importantly people had an opportunity to discuss all things climate related.”
Learn more about Coo Park United here
