ATU Receives CPRE Hampshire Sustainable Communities Award
On Tuesday 12th December, several members of the Andover Trees United team attended the CPRE Hampshire Countryside Awards, held at King’s Somborne Village Hall.
The event was attended by the winners of the four award categories:
Sustainable Communities - won by Andover Trees United for the Cabin in Harmony Woods
Landscape - won by the Hedgerows of Ogden Valley Environment Scheme (H.O.O.V.E.S.), near Fordingbridge
Grassroots Action - won by the Pick Up Poo Squad (P.U.P.S.) of Ballard Water Meadows, New Milton
Environmental Education - won by Popell Barns Mobile Farm, Botley
The judges said of our Cabin project:
This is an excellent application well aligned with the aims of the sustainable community award. It is a well thought out project, using locally-sourced materials, involving the local community in its creation and in its build, and with long term benefit to the local community. The organisers have been imaginative in involving the community in its construction and in using this as an opportunity to teach new skills. The use of hyper-local materials and low impact building techniques is impressive as are other sustainable aspects of the build such as rooftop solar and water capture and storage. The supporting letters from local schools support the long term community benefit of this scheme.
After announcing the category winners in October, CPRE Hampshire visited each group to film a video about the projects. These were then shown at the awards ceremony. It was fantastic to watch the four 10-minute videos going into each brilliant project in such detail, and see the faces doing the hard work. You can view their video on the Cabin below.
The four winners had been entered into the CPRE Hampshire Choice Awards, which were open to a public vote to decide the overall winner to be announced on the day. With almost half the vote, the winner was the ‘PUPS’ from Ballard Water Meadows in New Milton. They are a group of dog-walkers (and some walkers without dogs) who collect dog poo that has been left by others on their local conservation site. They have also created signs educating the public on why dog mess is bad for the environment, and provide free poo bags in dispensers at the site gates. Astonishingly, the PUPS made a very generous gesture and decided to split their £500 prize equally with the other three category winners, saying “we can’t possibly spend £500 on poo bags!”
CPRE Countryside Charity Hampshire Chair Margaret Paren thanked all the people who submitted entries to the awards:
The Countryside Awards are a real celebration of all the hard work and dedication of so many people working to support or enjoy the countryside in different ways. It is genuinely heartening to see the scope of work going on throughout Hampshire by people with similar values and ideals to CPRE Hampshire; protecting a thriving countryside for all to share and enjoy.
Many congratulations to all the category award winners, and especially to the PUPS as the overall winner! All the projects are amazing, and very much needed.
See the video created by CPRE below. If you have trouble viewing, you can also watch it (along with those of the other category winners) on the CPRE Hampshire YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@cprehampshire2167/videos