Publicity in Penrith and Eden District

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Penrith and Eden District Freegle received funding in May 2016 for a year from the Cumbria County Council Community Waste Prevention Fund - more details - supplemented with a little funding from Freegle itself. The projects plans to:

  • Run four Give and Take events across Eden District
  • Produce a fortnightly blog
  • Produce a list of alternatives to Freegle in Eden District
  • Produce a guide/short report for other Freegle groups indicating the success of these publicity efforts

This page will detail what's been done over the year - and list other on-going publicity efforts.

Blog entries, articles and press releases

Local moderator Chris is writing a blog with posts at least every fortnight, usually more often.

Chris is also submitting a piece every month to the free magazine Penrith Today that is delivered to 13,500 addresses in Penrith and many nearby areas - though not the whole of Eden District. There is only room for one photo and 200 words ie quite short. The lead time is long, so the copy date is about a month before the magazines start being delivered.

Occasional press releases will be sent to the local weekly newspaper the Cumberland and Westmorland Herald and various parish magazines, eg to publicise Give and Take events or stall appearances. Note that parish magazines usually only appear every couple of months, so you need to start getting publicity out in good time.

The current active posts tool will be used to give people a taster list of what sort of items are available or wanted.

Local group website

The website www.penrithedenfreegle.org.uk was revamped for Penrith and Eden District Freegle. This has blog entries and one or two information pages. The site uses Drupal 8 but another/easier blogging system can be used.

Note that accounts need to be set up at Twitter, Facebook, disqus, MailChimp, Google Analytics, etc.

Current active posts tool

For the blog and articles, it is useful to have a comprehensive list of all the items currently available. A tool was written to show this, divided up into categories (that the Freegle system automatically detects). By default the tool restricts the shown items to the ones listed in the last week; however you can opt to show items over different period: from 'today' to '3 months'. Note that this tool does NOT show items that have come and gone.

To actually use Freegle to respond to these offers and requests - or post your own - please sign in at Freegle Direct.

Local reuse outlets list

An initial list is available in the Freegle Direct other reuse outlets list. This list for Eden District will be checked and enhanced during this project.

Report on activities

This wiki page is the main report on the outputs and outcomes of this project

Application process

Having seen that the Community Waste Prevention Fund was available, we looked at how this fitted in with what we wanted to do locally and put together a project proposal. The application process involved filling in a form, a breakdown of costs, supplying two quotes for the work and providing various documents: bank statement, annual report and accounts, equal ops statement and constitution - a child protection and vulnerable adults policies were not needed. Chris put together the application, it was digitally signed by the Freegle chair and secretary and submitted by local moderator Elaine. The application was checked by county council officers and in course put to the relevant county council committee, who agreed it and the funds were released a month or so later. The Freegle Ltd board approved their contribution towards the project, including some funds from a restricted donation towards element #3 of the project.

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