Hello there! We are in the process of creating a bold, inspiring and action orientated website; it is currently in progress so please see http://diyeducation.wordpress.com/ for whats going on and how to get involved. :)

DIY Education Collective

DIY Education Collective is a new non-profit workers' cooperative which has been established to support groups of people to organise their own environmental popular education events based on their interests and concerns. We are a popular education organisation committed to supporting groups of people in learning together about matters that are important to them. Popular education is education which assumes that all participants have knowledge and experience to share, and that everyone's experience is valid. It is politically engaged and endeavours to support the overcoming of oppression. It aims to be a process through which communities make change themselves, according to their own concerns and realities. In addition, popular education engages with the social and political context in which it takes place. DIY Education Collective aim to share and support popular education which engages with the reality and severity of the current climate crisis across the world and in the UK. Our work with diverse groups of people in areas suffering from environmental injustices will focus on issues and problems important to the groups.

Environmental Justice Education Project

The Environmental Justice Education Project exists to support communities living in high emissions areas (for example near to power stations or airports), and other areas of environmental injustice linked to greenhouse gas emissions (for example near to new open cast coal mines) in organising thier own day of education and action planning about issues that concern or inspire them. Anything that prevents people from living in a clean and healthy environment is an environmental injustice. Those who are exposed to environmental injustices may have little power within existing systems of governance, consultation and economic and political inequality to make changes to improve or protect their environment. We see climate change as perhaps the starkest and biggest example of environmental injustice. Those who have created the problem through pursuit of power and profit have better resources available to them to escape from the consequences. Meanwhile, the poorest people, who have made less contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, are unable to change their environment or move away when there's a drought, a hurricane, a tsunami, a famine. On a smaller and more local scale within the UK, those living under flight paths, next to motorways, or on the sites of planned open cast mines, are not those who stand to profit from these things. The Environmental Justice Education Project aims to support people whose voices are not being heard in organising together, on a local and national scale, to make the changes that are important to them and to take back control of their locality. It also aims to help feed into the development of an international environmental justice movement which makes links between local issues of environmental injustice all around the world and global issues of environmental injustice such as climate change.

We are working towards a Day of Environmental Justice Education. On one day, communities around the UK will run popular education events to learn about how to tackle local environmental injustices and make plans for action. These days will be an opportunity to develop local networks and also networks of solidarity between groups fighting for environmental justice. If you live in a community which is struggling against environmental injustice and would like to get involved, or if you would like to get involved in organising this project, showing solidarity and fighting climate change from a point of view of environmental justice, get in touch!