Staff and volunteers at Stroud Valleys Project are celebrating this year as the environmental charity turns 21 years old. To mark the occasion the charity is organising a special event on 22 June for its current volunteers who will enjoy an afternoon out at Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust finishing with a barbeque.

 

 

Originally founded in 1988 to help protect the industrial heritage of Stroud and its five valleys the charity now works with schools, community groups and volunteers training them to appreciate and protect the wildlife and green spaces on their doorstep.

Over the 21 years SVP has been integral to supporting several other schemes to help local people and the environment. It helped the Slad Valley Action Group stop development in fields off Summer Street, assisted in the Community Planning Conference in 1996 and supported Clare Gerbrands while she got the Stroud Farmers Market up and running.

Currently SVP runs a varied programme of events exploring the natural world locally as well as looking after Trinity Pocket Park and the Long Ground in Stroud; the Lake at the Lawns, Cainscross; Hamwell Leaze, Cashes Green; Holywell Orchard, Cam. It has run a successful project in the Severn Vale working with famers and landowners looking at creating a healthy farmland mosaic. And this month it has been featured tidying up the Lake at the Lawns on the BBC’s Dirty Weekend part of the Breathing Spaces campaign and started an important hedgerow survey funded by DEFRA.