Kingstone Guides

The Friends of Warndon Villages are an active community volunteer group working to improve and enhance Warndon Villages in Worcester, UK.

Overthorpe village, Overthorpe hill, roads towards Middleton Cheney

Our first litter pick took place in November 2016. People stopped their cars & asked how to get involved, more have joined since. We live in a beautiful area & want to get rid of the litter which spoils the countryside. 6 Local businesses & 2 village residents have sponsored us & we now all have our own equipment (not borrowed from the District Council) Our hi-vis vests have a litter picking logo on the back & the Sponsor's name on the front. Our Parish Council support us by insuring us and a local garage has offered assistance.

Mashamshire is an area of outstanding beauty. We are doing what we can to preserve it. We do litter collection along the lanes and footpaths in and around Masham - and we find loads of plastic. We are reducing the impact of micro-plastics on the diet of your children and grand-children! A Masham resident has kindly offered to pay for our group meeting coffees. Many thanks. As we go about Mashamshire we get many kind appreciations from folk that we meet.

After conducting a survey in the area, litter was mentioned as a menace. The Green Party in Windmill Hill would like to organise a litter picking day on Saturday 13th April 2019.

Come and meet likeminded neighbours who want to make our beautiful town cleaner and safer for wildlife by giving up 1 hour a week(or whenever suits).Lots of fresh air and feel good factor is free to all.Just bring along gloves and a litter picker.Hope to meet you soon .AJ

This cross Derbyshire group has been assembled on Nextdoor to enable like minded people to join together in collecting litter, raising awareness in the community plus ......

I have started picking up litter at my local playing field and I collect it from my street. It upsets me that people have no regard or respect for the area that they live and I have decided to do something about it.

We live here and care about our neighbourhood. It is up to us to look after it and make it a nice place to live. Our ground-zero is Sheerwater Recreation Area. This is a heavily used open space which many of us enjoy using. Because it is so popular it inevitably attracts a lot of rubbish - but this is an easy, and rewarding, problem to deal with. Once we've cleaned up the park on one of our regular n0 $#!+ sessions, then we extend our reach outwards along the canal and neighbouring areas to cover as much as we can.

Who are we? We are an environmental group undertaking planting in our village, litter picks, promoting reduction in Co2 and smart driving, and working with the local community to make our village a litter free area. We deliver over 1700 newsletters around our village promoting our message and work with Thringstone Primary School and the local brownie group various events, including a scarecrow festival in June 2011 which brought together all sectors of the community . We held another scarecrow event, in conjunction with Thringstone Methodists, on Saturday 6th July 2013. Our chairman litter picks daily, and is helped by others who litter pick regularly. We try, where possible, to recycle items which can be recycled. We petitioned for extra recycling bins in our village and now have two tin and plastic bottle recycling points and a glass recycling point, and are currently asking for the council to consider ways of recycling acceptable items put in roadside litter bins. Between February 2013 and the end of February 2014, we removed 1,958 bags of litter from the village and woodlands, which we feel is a staggering amount. We have also worked with other groups on environmental issues in the village, and were part of the steering group that saw Thringstone Youth Club win the Children and Young People\\\\\\\'s Green Footprints Award in 2011 for their mural project. We have taken over several flowerbeds and previously untidy and unused areas in the village for planting and offer historical and environmental walks around the village. Please see our website which is www.friends-of-thringstone.org.uk for further details on our group, plus details on our constitution, health and safety policy, equal opportunities policy, parental consent statements and volunteer expenses statement. You can also see on that site details of all our publications. What have we done? In 2009 we won the NW Leicestershire Green Footprints Awards, were awarded an outstanding achievement certificate by East Midlands In Bloom in 2009, and won a gold and silver in the village achievement awards run by the Rural Community Council. In 2010 and were finalists in the Community and Partnerships category of the NWLDC\\\\\\\'s Green Footprints Awards and again in 2013. In 2011 we won The Queen\\\\\\\'s Award for Voluntary Service, something of which we are very proud, especially since 2011 was the European Year of Volunteering,. In 2015 we won the Big Tidy Award at the Keep Britain Tidy Jubilee Awards 2015. In 2021 we won the Leicestershire Live Environmental Heroes Award and also won the Community Organisation Award 2021 with Leicestershire Community Champions. We have a facebook page, and we are also on twitter - address is @Thringstone2. In 2019, our chairman was awarded a British Empire Medal for service to Thringstone and in September 2019, her dog, who accompanied her on all her litter picks, was awarded a commendation from the PDSA.