In November 2007 CHIP formed a partnership with Kelvin Clyde Greenspace (KCG). Since then one of KCG’s workers has been attached to the team two days per week to help local community groups take practical action to create better environments for children and families. Some of the pieces of work to which KCG are contributing include:

 

• Bringing a local Family Learning Centre garden back into use

• Planning an Easter ‘family forest school’ with families from Molendinar Family Learning Centre

• Giving focus to a community garden project that’s been in some local people’s minds for the past year

• Developing Byshot Brae, a piece of previously derelict land.

 

KCG’s involvement has enabled CHIP to work with local people on a social justice agenda while offering the real prospect of small-scale but tangible changes. Combining talk, action and participation Local people get tired of ‘all talk and no action’, but they also feel disempowered and angry when changes do take place without them being involved. CHIP works on the basis that, in order for there to be genuine transformation in a community, there has to be a combination of ‘talking’ and ‘doing’. The close partnership between CHIP and KCG is achieving this.

 

The partners hope that the outcome will be sustainable environmental change, and that this will be owned by local people because they have been active players in the process.