By Jennifer Hiley

What is Fairer World Lindfield?

Fairer World Lindfield (FWL) is a climate action community group, established in 2019, which aims to raise awareness and encourage individual and collective action to combat the climate and ecological crisis. By promoting options for more sustainable choices and taking small steps our hope is to play our part in mitigating and adapting to climate change with a local voice and a vision for a fairer world for future generations.

How does FWL go about this?

Our actions include curating, creating and hosting events to educate and inspire people to reduce their impact on the planet through making more sustainable choices. We want to help people to reduce their carbon footprint and become more aware of what is happening in and around Lindfield, the wider community and our planet.
Part of FWL’s original formation was in achieving accreditation from the Fairtrade Foundation for Lindfield to become a Fairtrade Village in April 2018. Since then we have given many talks to schools, churches and community groups.

What’s FWL been getting up to recently?

FWL are thrilled to have been awarded Lindfield Parish Council’s very first community award, The Climate Change Award, plus a £250 grant which we will invest in creating a website to amplify our message. This award recognises FWL for sharing knowledge and information to raise awareness about the negative impacts of the climate and ecological emergency. We are honoured to have received this award which will galvanise our team’s efforts to do more!
You may also have seen us on Lindfield Village Day this year alongside Lindfield Repair Café.

In April and May this year Chris and James visited four local primary schools (Lindfield, Blackthorns, St Peter’s and Great Walstead) to talk to the children about Fairtrade and the devastating impact that climate change is having on the world’s food producers.

In April we hosted a fantastic event in the King Edward Hall, called ‘The Green Extravaganza’. The concept was to bring local folks together to showcase their efforts to help our environment. Visitors could peruse tables on organic gardening, composting, soil, eco-friendly household products and cosmetics, solar panels, e-bike conversions, setting up a wormery, upcycling, rain water harvesting, air source heat pumps, nature photography, eco floral art, garden ponds, swapping plant pots, and recycling. Several organisations were also represented including: Fairer World Lindfield, Greener Lindfield, Lindfield Horticultural Society, Lindfield Repair Café, Ounce, the Growing Network, Sussex Wildlife Trust, Fair Trade and the Hurst Hedgehog Haven. Free to all, with complementary refreshments, we provided a warm inviting setting for anyone to come along and learn more.

Last November we hosted an Energy Help Desk at The Stand Up Inn. We had over 60 people pop in for mulled wine/tea/ cake and glean information from our community of experts and Lindfield residents on subjects such as: solar panels, draft proofing and insulation, heat pumps, waste, grants, recycling, creating a garden pond and energy efficiency as well as starting a wormery. We also had support from The Stand Up’s Andi Frost who sells eco-friendly products through Fill Good online store www.fillgoodstore.co.uk – find out more about Fill Good at the Lindfield Pop Up, 16th November @ The Stand Up Inn 09:00 – 12:00.

We had incredible engagement and feedback such as “the support that this energy help desk provides is invaluable to the community” and “very informative” and “I have learnt so much”.

What’s next?

FWL will be at the October Repair Café at 10am on Saturday 7th October at the Lindfield United Reformed Church with our Energy Help Desk. As outlined above, we will have a host of experts on hand to discuss topics to help you reduce your carbon footprint. Please do come along and find out more, and don’t forget to bring along anything you need repairing while you’re there!

We are also launching a new initiative called GreenUP! - where we will be hosting bi-monthly informal get-togethers where anyone is welcome to come along and learn and discuss a topic of our collective choosing. Our inaugural session is on 14th November, from 7-8.30pm at The Stand Up Inn, on the topic ‘How green is greenwashing?’. You are invited to come along with an open mind and with any information or thoughts on the topic that you are willing to share. We hope to connect, inspire, educate and share knowledge on the subject. It would be great to see you there!

The FWL team are fundraising to build a website to provide a destination for our village, wider community groups and beyond. This would be a space where people could come and learn more and we truly hope to have raised enough funds in the near future to make this a reality. If you would like to donate or if you are a budding designer/developer or content creator who would like to help out please do get in touch at: fairerworldlindfield@ gmail.com.

We also wanted to send a special mention of thanks to Sarah Reynolds and Matt Robson who helped FWL to revamp our logo! We are looking to plan out our activities for 2024 so please get in touch if you have any ideas or would like to volunteer get in touch at: fairerworldlindfield@gmail. com – and follow us on our socials.