Publicity in Penrith and Eden District

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.

Possible topics for a blog:

• Stories of recent handovers, ideally with a photo
• OFFER or WANTED of the week
• Profile of a Freegler
• Profile of a moderator
• What a moderator does
• List of online resources for those interested in reuse, upcycling, etc
• Jargon buster - what is the circular economy?
• Feature on items you've got that have lasted a long time - or you've fixed up

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.

• Site user logins can only be created by the site admin
• More than one user can write a blog
• Blogposts are shared by hand onto the group Twitter and Facebook pages
• Comments on blog posts are handled using disqus
• A blog feed is available at http://www.penrithedenfreegle.org.uk/rss.xml
• MailChimp is used to send out blogposts by email which anyone can sign up to - MailChimp checks the RSS feed and emails new posts once a day
• Google Analytics are used to track site usage
• A site map has been set up for use at Google webmaster tools and Bing webmaster tools

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.

• Current active items at Penrith and Eden District Freegle
• Active items tool for other Freegle groups

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

Events

The following events are planned as a part of this project:

• Alston Gala stall and Give and Take - Saturday 25th June 2016
• Shap Give and Take - Saturday 1st October 2016
• Kirkby Stephen Give and Take - Saturday 26th November 2016

Another Give and Take is being pencilled in for March 2017 in Penrith - possibly acting as a PACT Seedy Saturday/Sunday event as well. It is hoped that all events will contain an element of upcycling or similar, to demonstrate ways of keeping items in use.

Other events:

• Penrith Show on [1] PACT stall] and Cumbria County Council showing Freegle, reuse and digesters - Saturday 23rd July 2016

Alston Gala beneficiaries

Approx 100 people dropped by the stall:

• 0-4: 5 (mainly balloons!)
• 5-11: 6 (Watching baubles and asking about Freegle)
• 12-19: 12 (As 5-11)
• 20-55: 46 (Younger families watching baubles and Freegling, older just Freegling)
• 55+: 31 ( Mainly Freegling, but some (Grandparents?) interested in Baubles)

Lessons learned

• Very useful to have some freebies to give away to illustrate the concept (even though not a full give and take)
• Nice to have balloons, baubles, upcycled-bags and other freebies to attract kids and families
• Volunteer: "I did notice the older children at the table were often very confused by the concept-"Can I really take this? How much is this one? Can I have these too? " were frequent questions that I had to explain, and I gave them papers to give to their parents!"

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.