Zero Carbon (Schools) Task Force

On 10th December I presented Ed Balls, Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), Secretary of State and his Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Diana Johnson, with the main recommendations of the Zero Carbon Task Force I have been chairing for nearly two years.

The Task Force and the officials were expecting him to breeze in and thank us for all our hard work, only to be invited to sit down and explain our thoughts in a robust conversation for some 20 minutes. The Task Force was persuaded early on that Zero Carbon was first about behaviour change, and only then technical, and we adopted the Bill Bordass mantra "halve the demand, double the efficiency and halve the carbon in the supply and you are down to one eighth of the emissions".

John Hope Gateway on STV

"Edinburgh's Botanic Garden Blossoms into the 21st Century"

Christmas Toy Collection 2009

To a great disappointment of many ECA members, busy December schedules prevented us this year from getting involved in Crisis (an initiative aiming at providing help and support to the homeless) as we used to do in previous years and in an attempt to find a less time-consuming but by no means less charitable way of continuing with ECA’s Christmas traditions, our Christmas Party Team came up with the idea of a Toy Collection for one of the London’s children homes.

Our Office Manager took charge and liaised with Ms Beard, the Centre Manager of the Little House - a day-care ‘play and leisure’ home for disabled (mainly autistic) children – who agreed to take part in our initiative despite the fact that the Centre was soon to move into a new location and the deadline of our collection coincided with the handover date of their new property at 2a Willingford Avenue.

A big box stood next to our Christmas Tree for almost a month, and several heavy-duty “Secret Santa’ bags were delivered to the Little House on Friday, 18th December.




We will be looking out for news on the Little House’s team as they continue to provide support to activity groups, parents, carers and siblings at their new location and under the new name of St Quintin’s Centre.