Act for Eden’s Rivers is an exciting two-year project supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.  It will provide a wide range of opportunities for people to become pollution fighters, habitat creators and river defenders.  From making a pledge to make a small change to people’s everyday lives and reducing their contribution to the climate crisis, cleaning up our riverbanks to shouting about rivers, there will be something for everyone to get involved with…all thanks to National Lottery players.

Project activity will be based around 3 themes:

Conservation Action

We’ll work with communities close to our river conservation sites to kindle their interest in their local environment by coming along to our community river awareness events. We hope to inspire them to join us for practical river conservation adventure on their doorstep such as balsam bashing, tree or wildflower planting and signing up for an Everyday Action promise.

We’ll bring volunteers new and old together for an annual volunteer event to celebrate the amazing work of our volunteers and say a big thank you.

Everyday Action

Tackling the climate crisis may seem a daunting task, but we believe that acting locally will help globally. We are planning a number of ’everyday actions’ campaigns that will empower people to make small, everyday changes to their lives (such as reducing the use of single-use plastic).

With lots of people signing up online to make a river promise and acting on it over two months, we hope these small, individual, everyday actions will add up to a big, positive impact on Eden’s rivers and the environment.

Advocacy Action

Young people from Carlisle Youth Zone and Nacro in Carlisle will work alongside artists and Trust staff to explore rivers, have a go at river conservation activities and use creative arts to highlight the issues our rivers face.  We hope they’ll be inspired by their local river to shout about why they’re amazing, the critical role healthy, freshwater rivers play and what we can all do in our everyday lives to help rivers.

The project will culminate in Cumbria’s first youth River Summit, giving young people a voice to send a message to others about how we can help protect our fragile river habitats.