With this in mind, we are also developing other revenue streams within Europe that tie in to our mission and build on the growing presence of Trash Hero in this region. ![]() Having dedicated staff also made apparent just how essential this type of long term core funding is to ensure we can transition to a scalable and professional organisation, while maintaining our impact. Initiatives like the kids’ program we developed could not have happened without it. We are deeply grateful to the foundations and individuals who believe in our mission and our ability to deliver change, and so provided the vital core funding to make this happen. We have grants to finance this employment for a year with more funding, this can be extended and hopefully increased to sustain a full team of key staff. In May, we crossed an important bridge, by appointing one person within the organisation to work full time, on program support and development. It’s an astonishing figure and one that shows the dedication of the our global family. This year alone, Trash Hero volunteers have given at least 93,000 hours of their time for free. Having readily available, branded resources such as the books the high-visibility t-shirts reusable bottle and bag stock professionally designed marketing materials educational videos and communication tools, all enable our volunteers to have maximum impact at zero cost in manpower. To see children of all backgrounds engage with the story and take the issues to heart in their daily lives has been one of the highlights of the year. With donations from the initial crowdfunding campaign and other sponsorship, to date 10,500 English and local language books have been distributed free to chapters in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. This sense of hope has further increased with the launch of our kids’ program in May 2018. And we hear dozens of similar stories from around the globe, of ordinary people being inspired by our work, and harnessing that energy to help their communities. Unlike many environmental organisations, our movement is fuelled not by anger, but by hope. ![]() Together with her team, she went on to engage the residents, including government agencies, to take action – not just with weekly cleanups, but reducing and recycling – and recently the island administration has moved to ban plastic bags with immediate effect.įor me, it is stories like this, rather than statistics – although we do have an impressive record! – that make Trash Hero special. In this respect, the Trash Hero family meetings – national conferences held twice a year to give our volunteers the opportunity to share knowledge and ideas, and receive training – have again proved an essential tool to motivate and empower our growing movement.Īt the meeting in Bangkok this October, one new volunteer, Fah, from Trash Hero Koh Samed, movingly described how Trash Hero, and the conference, had helped “restore faith in humanity”, after months of struggling and feeling helpless at the waste situation on her small Thai island. Our challenge has been to harness this passion and transform it into something positive. One side effect of the rising public awareness of plastic pollution has been a corresponding leap in frustration, or even anger at the lack of waste management infrastructure and perceived local apathy. The bottle refill network expanded to hundreds of new businesses and we standardised program quality across our network with written guidelines in the comprehensive volunteer Handbook. Our existing chapters continue their weekly cleanups – many now well on the way to 200 events – with as strong a spirit and passion as ever. Throughout this expansion, our core focus has stayed the same: education through action. ![]() With a new mentoring program in place, we look forward to seeing them take flight over the coming months. The number of local Trash Hero chapters, including fledgling groups, now stands at more than 100 (official figures will follow early next year). In 2018, as the world finally opened its eyes to the scourge of single use plastic and the damage it is causing to our planet and our health, we saw a phenomenal growth in the amount of people ready to stand up and take action on waste in their communities. Since the last Christmas newsletter, when we proudly announced 42 chapters, our organisation has continued to be at the forefront of ‘ glocal ’ environmental action.
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