Charity

Wanted: New Trustees!

ELCV urgently needs more people to join as trustees to help run our charity. Without another three or four new trustees, very likely the charity will be unable to continue. For this reason, we are emailing all countryside volunteers to invite them to consider stepping forward to join us as a trustee. You may have seen the email below (download here), which explains what ELCV does, why we need new trustees and what they do – and how to find out more if you are interested in getting involved.

And/Or see an article in the Courier here

 

A Good Workman Always Thanks His Tools!

Friends of Yellowcraig volunteers making use of some of the tools provided by the grant award from North Berwick Golf Club Community Fund, as they tackle the invasive plant pirri pirri in the sand dunes at Yellowcraig. It’s a task that requires good tools, and as importantly the hands to wield them – so if you are interested in getting involved with countryside volunteering then please get in touch: What can we offer you? | Countryside Volunteering | East Lothian Council

ELCV AGM

The ELCV recently held their Annual General Meeting (we finally report - better late than never!). The restrictions of Covid meant we kept deferring it, but the Scottish Charities Commission then gave blanket permission to temporarily run such meetings online instead of physically, so that's what we did. And as part of the AGM we approved a change to our constitution to allow us to carry on this way in the future - we've moved into the 21st Century!

What did it cover? - well Jenny gave us a resume of the year, John Harrison updated us on progress with the Aberlady Hub, Dave Quarendon reported on the giant hogweed projects and our social media sites, Dick & Jenny gave an overview of the finances, and all the committee members were re-elected - apart from our leader Dave Oldham, who sadly has had to retire due to ill health, so Dick Gill agreed to take over as chairman. And we welcomed two new members onto the committee - Andrew Stevenson and Terry Page.

See the full details in the minutes on our website here 

Litter Pickers

Out of the blue, ELCV recently got the following email:

 

I am writing from Green18, a charity that exists to further environmental education in Scotland. We have a project that aims to set up 'clean-up hubs' (as we call them) and have been successful in raising funds to get equipment for these. Initially the project was going to collaborate with Scotmid and equipment would be housed in stores across the country.
Sadly, this collaboration hasn't been successful and we are now looking to provide equipment to groups and organisations that can utilise the equipment in their local communities with some support from Green18 where necessary.
I was wondering whether you would be interested in receiving some litter pickers to be used to help keep Edinburgh clean of litter.
 
We immediately said yes! And today ten of them were delivered - top quality see the spec here.
 

Many thanks to the charity Green18 on facebook. 
 

So if you are one of our volunteers who loves keeping the countryside and beaches clean, contact Jenny to borrow one - no more excuses!

ELCV AGM

The Annual General Meeting of the East Lothian Countryside Volunteers charity will be held on Friday 13th (lucky us!) December at 2pm in the Haddington Town House, Main Hall (upstairs).
There will be reports on what the ELCV has achieved over the last year, plans for the future, and (re-)election of trustees for the committee (see agenda)
We are looking to recruit two or three new trustees, especially one to represent the Levenhall group, and to appoint one trustee as Secretary. If you are interested in any of these worthwhile posts, please let us know beforehand, eg by email to contact@elcv.org.uk
All volunteers are welcome to attend, although to take part in any voting, or to become a trustee, you need to be a registered member of ELCV. If you aren't a member, but would like to be, simply email contact@elcv.org.uk.

Trustees Meetings

Not the most exciting of news, but needs must! The charity trustees meet every couple of months, to hear project updates, discuss future activities, and even make decisions. If you want to see what happened at recent meetings, see the minutes here.

One great piece of news is that Duncan Priddle's replacement, Jenny Hargreaves, who was appointed a month or two ago, is due to start her new role this Thursday (3rd October). We look forward to that!

Scottish National Heritage Support

Scottish National Heritage (SNH) have very sensibly donated the princely sum of £1000 "To support the delivery of a catchment scale INNS project, primarily controlling Giant Hogweed in the River Tyne catchment, East Lothian". We are very grateful. This will be distributed amongst the various farmers to help defray their not inconsiderable labour and material costs in tackling the nasty invasive Giant Hogweed.