A Sustainable Environment What can we do LOCALLY to achieve this?

Monthly Talk
Albion House 7.30pm Thursday 11th Feb 2010
Vera Elliot
will talk about
A Sustainable Environment
What can we do LOCALLY to achieve this?
www.eastcliffra.org
Vera Elliott has been active in the environmental movement for many years, becoming co-ordinator of Sutton Friends of the Earth in April 1983.

Through the Open University she studied The Handicapped Person in the Community, An Ageing Population, Making Sense of Society, Living with Technology, Man Made Futures, Peoples Policies and Administration and Systems Design.

From 1987-94 as founder-director of registered charity The Centre for Environmental Initiatives (CEI), her work was 'to promote a greater awareness of environmental problems and the potential for resolving them'. Having created the first ever Environmental Charter Vera was instrumental in working up the concept of ‘Towards a Sustainable Sutton’ implemented as The London Borough of Sutton's Local Agenda 21/Sustainable Development Initiative. This became Sutton Environment Network and the CEI has now updated its name to Ecolocal www.ecolocal.org.uk. The borough remains at the forefront of ‘green’ progress serving as a role model throughout Europe and worldwide. She was instrumental in the foundation of the Bioregional Development Group www.bioregional.com, assisted Green & Away to expand from weekend green holidays to Europe’s only eco conference centre www.greenandaway.org.uk, has instigated many projects and worked with organisations in the voluntary, statutory and business sectors.

In September 1994 Vera handed over the work of the CEI to a very capable team, whilst becoming a Trustee of the Centre.

Having moved to Thanet, and now working in a voluntary capacity, she persevered to get a Local Agenda 21 process started there and was chairman of the LA21 Steering Group during its early years. However this group was disbanded in October 2005 due to lack of council commitment. She was founder in 1999 and now manager of Sustainability Actions (SA) - Enabling Change in Thanet, a project that initially benefited from the considerable experience and support of the CEI.

In 1999 she received a Special Mention Certificate in The Queen Mother’s Birthday Awards and has since received a Thanet Local Agenda 21 Award 2000, Kent Award for Volunteering Excellence 2001 and Experience Corps Award 2002 for outstanding service to her local community. In December 2002 Vera was recognised as a ‘Social Entrepreneur’ and from October 2003-June 2005 managed a European funded project enabling SA to facilitate ‘Enterprise and Sustainability Thanet’ (EaST) which worked directly with around 30 local businesses encouraging them to put Corporate Social Responsibility at the forefront of their agendas.

She was Chairman of East Kent Council for Voluntary Service until its demise in December 2006; was a member of the Thanet Voluntary and Community Sector Forum Working Group and Thanet Compact Implementation Group until 2008; a member of the Margate Stronger Safer Communities Board until her resignation on ethical grounds; Thanet Fairtrade Steering Group until early 2009 and is on the committees of Thanet Senior Citizens’ Forum and the Thanet Volunteer Centre. She has organised the KWT Gardening for Wildlife Awards Scheme in Thanet for the past 4 years and would like to enable Thanet’s many residents’ groups to create a forum and to help Dreamland become a ‘Back to the Future’ Visitor Attraction. Climate Change is now top of her agenda and all that must be done at a local and personal level to address this potentially catastrophic situation.

Her overall aim is to achieve a socially, ecologically and economically sustainable society by empowering and networking people's potential - and after that . . . become compost!
--oOo-- Updated 2010