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The Scottish Government has launched a new website (www.greenerscotland.org/welcome) aimed at helping people in Scotland go greener together. The Greener Scotland website has advice, information and resources to help you reuse and recycle, save energy, eat more seasonally and more. You can also create your own Greener Plan, sign up for updates and follow @Greener2gethr on Twitter. Find out more in New website to help Scotland to go greener together.
The next Steering Committee will be on Thursday 16th Februry at Balnain community hall at 7.30pm. All members of the charity (and those interested in joining – no money required) are most welcome to attend.
The second meeting of the Cross Party Group in the Scottish Parliament on Rural Policy was held in December. The meeting focused on the issue of rural broadband. Two speakers – Stuart Robertson from Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Duncan Nisbet from the South of Scotland Aliance – presented jointly on “Next Generation Broadband: South of Scotland and Highlands and Islands. Here is the link to the slides – Next Generation Broadband slides (PDF) and minutes can be found on the SAC website.
This research briefing from SAC may be of interest on low carbon behaviours. Low Carbon Behavious (PDF)
The next Soirbheas meeting is taking place this Friday, January 13th, at Blairbeg Hall, Drumnadrochit. All members (and prospective members) most welcome.
This week the Soirbheas board learnt that its application to Social Investment Scotland for £250k grant and £250k loan had been approved (subject to due diligence, satisfactory documentation etc as is normal for this sort of financing). This is a great step forward and provides the critical equity for Soirbheas to enable the community to buy its turbine. The rest of the money is expected to come from Co-Op Bank and the credit approval is pending. Thank you to all those involved so far in helping us reach this key milestone.
The next Soirbheas Steering Committee Meeting is taking place on Wednesday 21st December at 7.30pm at Balnain Community Hall. This is a critical meeting as we hope to have heard by then whether Soirbheas has secured the grant funding from Social Investment Scotland that we need to proceed with buying one of the wind turbines for the benefit of the community. All members or prospective members welcome.
Please come along and join the board for a glass of wine as we would like to thank everyone who has supported us along the way this year to reach this point – helping us with increasing the charity membership and understanding what the community wants, advice and suggestions, assistance with the website, ideas for the newsletter….It has all been very much appreciated.
On Wednesday 23rd November, Tanya Castell (Chair of Soirbheas Ltd) met with Katie Handy of Social Investment Scotland (SIS) to discuss our wind farm proposal. Soirbheas have made it throught the first assessment process and now our application is being considered in more detail as to whether SIS would provide loan/grant funding. Without this money, Soirbheas will not be able to purchase the turbine being offered by Corrimony Energy to the community so this is a critical phase and we all have our fingers and toes crossed for luck!
The next Soirbheas Steering Committee meeting will be Thursday 24th November at 7.30pm at the Strathglass Community Hall, Cannich.
All members (or prospective members) are most welcome as we reach the critical stage in this project – the financing stage with discussions ongoing with debt and grant provider(s).
Tanya Castell, Chair of Soirbheas, attended GovCamp Scotland on Monday 7th November. The aim was to
explore the vision of Scotland’s Digital Future and seek commitment to work in partnership to achieve Scotland’s full potential in this regard. There were 300 people attending the event from academia, private, public and third sectors as well as members of the general public and at the end a Digital Participation Charter was signed by various organisations attending the event. DigitalParticipationCharterFinal
This links to one of Soirbheas’ key objectives which is to improve the internet connectivity for Strathglass and Glen Urquhart.