I just this moment received an email about this initiative, and wanted to share it on the blog because I know a lot of Forest Gate North residents will be really interested and keen to take part.

‘As part of the Climate Now Action Plan, we are recruiting for Climate Now Air Quality Health champions (CNAQHCs) to help deliver key messages across to the wider community to raise awareness – initially on anti-idling and encouraging walking to school.

We are planning to support and deploy our champions every step of the way – including a short induction session for each volunteer, followed by a one day course provided by the Royal Society of Public Health (RSPH), and then by an introduction to the key tasks we want CNAQHCs to get involved in.

At the moment we have got a long list of about 80 residents that we have been speaking to about health champions in general and we are hoping that some will want to get involved and become a CNAQHC.

However we need more of our residents to engage in a huge effort to tackle air pollution and this is where we need your help!

Our first Climate Now Air Quality Champion’s induction session will take place on the 22nd October 2019 at East ham library from 6-8pm.

If you know of anyone who may want to become a Newham Health Champion, and in particular a Climate Now Air Quality Health Champion, please have them contact Newham.HealthChampions@activenewham.org.uk
They will be asked to register effortlessly onto our system and they will be sent more details and an invitation to attend upcoming induction sessions.’

https://vimeo.com/dfptv/review/359236078/6fde422261

I am particularly pleased to see that walking to school and anti-idling will be the first things that we tackle. My one-woman campaign to stop idling is going pretty well, but is highly dependent on the guts and energy that I have at any time! And walking to school is such an important way of getting children active, building community, increasing road safety, as well as improving air quality (you can read my post about Healthy School Streets here).

Please do volunteer. I know that Forest Gate contains many people with the beliefs and skills to really make this happen. I recently shared a plea for volunteers to participate in a Food Waste trial on Facebook and Forest Gaters signed up with such alacrity that my colleagues had to start recruiting residents from elsewhere in the borough to ensure that the whole thing wasn’t weighted towards E7! Needless to say, I was very proud.

We look forward to working with you.