Evelyn Cottell, the committee member behind our extensive history of Sustainable Skerries, writes:

Sustainable Skerries celebrated its 15^th anniversary this summer.  Former and current committee members met up over dinner, to chat, reflect and celebrate the group’s achievements, from its beginnings in 2009 to date.  

Over dinner chat, I discovered so many initiatives and achievements from the early days, right through to today, all contributing in a profound way to enhance our local environment.  A simple blog article on the celebratory dinner developed into a very long and comprehensive “History of Sustainable Skerries”, now available on the website.  An unexpected ripple effect. This reference document, facilitated by the website availability of so many events captured by our online manager, Sabine McKenna, in one form or another, was very helpful to the “Pride of Place“ preparation team.  By capturing, categorizing and quantifying all our biodiversity and climate action achievements and assessing what we thought were most impactful, this helped in the preparation of the formal presentation to judges and in particular was central to creating a key Pride of Place document “Skerries Sustainability Ripple Effect Impacts”.  ✨Sabine here: The document is available on sustainableskerries.com/impacts! Back to Evelyn. ✨I hope those involved with SuSk over the 15 years and our wider community will read the article and Impacts document, and feel proud of what has been achieved.   (I did my best to fact check, but please, if there are any inaccuracies, let me or Sabine know). Sabine here again: Write to sustskerries@gmail.com please!

As a relatively new committee member, I was motivated to join in response to a call for volunteers to help with its first Skerries Eco Festival last September; in knowing that the best way to not feel hopeless about our climate and nature crises is to get up and do something positive about it, no matter how small; in believing in the ripple effect- the potential for positive change through small intentional actions and how seemingly insignificant actions can have far reaching consequences on societies and environments.