From attending Green Drinks, picking up your litter pickers, leading a community project, signing a petition, planting a tree or switching your bank… plus everything in between, we can’t believe since looking back since the ‘should we set up a eco facebook page’ conversation in the depths of lockdown 1, that so many people would rise up and take the lead in whichever ways they can.

It’s important to recognise that everyone has their existing lives and how we square off ‘being more sustainable’ alongside the demands of everyday life can be a challenge. We often hear people saying they don’t know where to start, or feel they don’t do enough, but we hope we can offer some reassurance that as with the beginning of The Eco Hub in 2020, it all starts with a positive first step, giving it a go and doing what you can with what you have.

• For those people able to drive an electric car or install solar, amazing!

• For those who feel able to search the web or read up on a new area of environmentalism, amazing!

• For the one day a week vegan, amazing!

• For the community leader, championing change in their workplace, amazing!

• For the busy families who choose locally grown in the weekly shop, amazing!

• For those who walk instead of taking the car, amazing!

• For popping the worm back on the soil, amazing!

Because, your environmental journey and role within the hub is to be celebrated no matter the scale or where your at. It looks so different for each of us, there is NO judgement and NO correct way to do this, we all need to make changes and supporting one another is the only way we will get there.

We understood really quickly that no one person has all the answers, no one (or two people) can do it all, that hierarchical, beuracratic, moany inaction had its time, but at Rainham Eco Hub we choose empowering people to take the lead on change, that it is better done than perfect and there is no need to wait for someone else to take the lead for change to happen, change is in all of us and we are better and stronger as a collective.

Our role as co-founders of the Hub can’t be to lead or be involved with all the action, there is just SO much great stuff going on. It is to help encourage, educate and empower our community to take the lead, thinking global but acting local and just GO FOR IT! Share the successes and learn from the mistakes.

Please, all we ask as volunteers is that you look after yourselves and each other. Volunteering and taking action can be exhausting and the last thing we need is for people to burn themselves out, especially as being more sustainable can be conflicting, tiring and sometimes even feel a little helpless. Remember, everyones capacity is their own and can vary. Be proud of what you can do, be aspirational but take time to pause if ever things feel too much.

As the founders, with no idea how insanely brilliant The – now BBC ‘Highly Commended’ and Kent Wildlife Trust awarded – Rainham Eco Hub could be we are so in awe of you all and thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Find The Rainham Eco Hub on Facebook: www.facebook.com/theecohubrainham