I’m Nellie, an S3 pupil at Knox Academy and I spent my week of work experience with the East Lothian Climate Hub. I hadn’t realised that Climate Hubs were a fairly new concept, because they had already achieved so much. The East Lothian Climate Hub has connected so many groups and communities and encouraged them to learn from each other and give advice to others of what they could achieve. It’s sort of like one big learning curve because not everyone is an expert on everything, they’re just trying to do the best they can for the community and make people aware of what they could be doing for the environment.
I was at Gilmerton House Garden where they were planning an event regarding the pond they had just put in. They wanted to share their experience of building the pond, the ups and downs, the process and the before and after. They weren’t planning a really formal event, just something with a nice relaxed environment, because that usually brings in more people, it was just going to be a sort of, ‘come down and we can have a nice chat about what we’ve done, we’re just like you, we’re not professionals’. There I learnt about the amazing volunteers who had transformed a rubbish dump into a garden with a diverse mix of plants, fruits and vegetables.
I worked with Lil (Low Impact Living) for a bit, sorting out their Revolving Wardrobe at The Mart in East Linton and learnt about this really useful, free and sustainable service that has provided support for so many people. I met Sarah (co-founder of Lil) who is very enthusiastic and taken her drive to do something about the climate crisis and turned it into many innovative projects and programmes.
I also learnt how much variety there is in the job and the vast range of things they do, whether this is through thinking of innovative ways to promote work/ideas, getting the attention of all ages, getting young people’s voices heard, celebrating achievements and communicating things in creative ways and as much as they can. They cover lots of topics and areas which you maybe wouldn’t think about in daily life, that really get you thinking and aware. I went to a few meetings that were very in depth and important, that talked about new areas I didn’t know much about. They’re constantly promoting and encouraging groups and communities and even when they’re not working, they’ll point curious people in the right direction.
In the end I learnt that there are lots of people who are just working really hard to improve things for the future and teaching/showing people how they can do the same which gives people long term hope. I learned about all the positive and creative businesses, volunteers and communities (which there are many of) in East Lothian who are trying their best to help people out and improve things for different areas of the environment.
