Green Light Trust
Green Light Trust
Their mission is to bring communities and landscapes to life through 'hands-on' learning and the growing of woodlands. With independence and self-sufficiency as the goal, they work with both urban and rural communities to find land, design, plant, manage and own their woodland projects.
They also provide education for sustainable development through local action and global citizenship. Their work in schools involves pupils from early years to 6th form; from gathering seeds to caring for woods. Their aim is to help develop wise caretakers of the earth’s resources.
Their goal is to build a unique patchwork of rejuvenated landscapes and communities, to initiate 200 projects and impact on 100,000 children.
They now have 33 rural and urban community-owned woodland projects in 8 counties. Over 47 hectares of land are now under community management. They have over 1000 committed volunteers with over 3000 children engaged in continual school programmes. Many common and endangered species are already colonising the woodlands. Their projects fulfil many of the government's targets for regeneration and sustainable communities.
A significant recent success for Green Light Trust has been the building of their new headquarters, the Foundry. The aim of The Foundry project is to produce a building that sits lightly on the earth both in its construction and user life, and to be a shining example of sustainable building skills using local material and labour. The building utilises hemp and lime rather than concrete and plastic, solar panels, reed-bed sewage system, recycled rainwater and heating fuelled by locally-produced biomass.
Coppiced timber from our own Community-owned woodland provides biomass to fuel the wood-chip boiler.
The internal walls are constructed from wattle-and-daub, and all materials and labour were as far as possible sourced from within a 20-mile radius.
