BHA secures funding to help the Barrhead community with The Climate Challenge project

Barrhead Housing Association (BHA) secured £99,804.00 from the Keep Scotland Beautiful Climate Challenge Fund for a new two-year project focusing on Dunterlie, Auchenback and the Sheltered Accommodation Complex in Barrhead.  The Climate Challenge Project will be run by BHA, with their partners Totnosh and the Dunterlie Food Share and it will offer free support to help the community of Barrhead to reduce food and textile waste. The project will facilitate discussion about climate change by delivering a series of cooking, upcycling, and recycling and will increase understanding of climate change in the local community through climate change discussions and programme of community climate themed events.

The Climate Challenge project offers free support to help people reduce their food waste and upcycle and recycle materials rather than throw away in the bin, as well as supplying information on how to reverse the effects of human made climate change.

Members of the Barrhead community are being offered the opportunity to learn cooking techniques to reduce food waste and upcycling skills and learn more about the links between general waste, and climate change. 

Totnosh will provide cooking classes for children and their families which are designed to encourage them to take an interest in food and healthy eating, learn basic cooking skills and experience new tastes in a fun and relaxed environment. 

Louisa McKay of Totnosh, said: “We are delighted to have been asked to be involved in this project to encourage local families to reduce food waste and increase their understanding of climate change and the small changes they can make which can make a real difference. Each week we will deliver the ingredients to participants who then log into the zoom classes to learn how to make delicious, family friendly meals using up leftovers that would otherwise go to waste.  It has been amazing to see how families have adapted to doing these classes online. Everyone has really enjoyed them, and the participants have been making the recipes again themselves.  The aim of the project is to help families reduce the amount of food that they are wasting and to learn about ways that they as individuals and also as part of a community can do their part to help reduce climate change. “

The meals are suitable for all the family and participants who have children are encouraged to get them involved in helping prepare the meals. During the classes there are discussions around using up leftovers, shopping locally, where our food comes from and the impacts of climate change and what we can do in our local community.

Bryan Dando BHA Community Regeneration Officer, said:  “The closures to community venues due to Covid-19 delayed the launch of the project, but we have adapted our delivery model with our partners to enable community members to take part in the project online, the food waste workshops have proved very popular and shortly we will be launching our online upcycling and recycling workshops.  It is our aim to combine this online delivery model with physical classes when access to community venues becomes an option in the near future.”

The project is being funded by The Climate Challenge Fund (CCF), which is a Scottish Government grant programme managed by environmental charity Keep Scotland Beautiful. The CCF provides funding and support to help community-led organisations in Scotland tackle climate change through projects that reduce local carbon emissions. Over 1,150 projects across all 32 local authorities have been awarded CCF grants for activities involving energy efficiency, sustainable travel, local food, and resource efficiency. Total CCF funding since 2008 has exceeded £111 million. 

The next set of classes will be starting on Friday 31st July. To book a place on the course please contact Louisa at info@totnosh.net