Monthly Challenge: Edible heirlooms

27th January 2012 by

Allotmenters’ ‘hungry season’ is almost at an end, and it’s that exciting time of year when it’s time to browse through seed catalogues, plan your home-grown-dinner calendar and get potting.

This month’s challenge is to combine this pleasure with doing some good for that magic thing that makes the world go round – no, not money… genetic diversity.

It’s as important to preserve plant diversity as it is that of animals like polar bears and tree frogs. The less we rely on a small number of varieties, the lower the risks to our food supply (and the better for our health). Greater plant variety also raises the chances of viable foodstuffs adapting well to climate change as we feel our way through an unpredictable 21st Century. So here is something you can do on your own windowsill or back garden that will make a real, positive difference.

So we’re asking you to be sure to order some heirloom or heritage seeds this year among your usual crop wishlist. These are old varieties that are not commonly grown these days. Not only can you help rescue these varieties for the future, you can have fun by impressing your friends with purple carrots and other surprising blasts from the past!

And we’d love you to get in touch to tell us what veggie treasures you’ve unearthed.

And once you’ve got your first batches of seeds bought (or swapped), you can start to learn the vital skill of seed-saving, meaning future generations will have you to thank for their nutritious meal.

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Posted in food glorious food, monthly challenge | 1 Comment »

It all makes sense!

25th January 2012 by

Felicity, of our Wild West ’09 cycle tour, talks about how Otesha has influenced her & the exciting new projects she’s been inspired to work on since!

Summing up how Otesha has influenced me is actually quite hard, simply because it has, in a bigger way than I could ever have imagined.

Back in Dec ’08 I applied for the role of Tour Liaison for Otesha’s 2009 ‘Wild West’ cycle tour. In an instant I knew it was an exciting opportunity, incorporating several of my key passions: cycling, performing & environmental issues. Staring right at me was my dream project.

After a trip to London & friendly interview, they gave me the role of Tour Liaison for Wild West ’09 (a 6-week tour of Wales from June-July).  10 days later I was flying to India to volunteer for 11 weeks, including time spent with The Centre for Tribal & Rural Development, a world away from the UK & all it has to offer. This was my second trip abroad volunteering in Tribal villages, having previously done so in Costa Rica. Understanding & knowing how a community can survive with no running water or electricity is humbling; add that to the daily threat of disease, poverty & natural disasters and suddenly I can no longer complain if I break a nail!

The Wild West Tour took me to some of the most beautiful & scenic places in Wales. Starting in Machynlleth we worked our way south along the coast, finally stopping in Merthyr Tydfil, an area of high deprivation & unemployment.

My memories of Wales & The Otesha Project filled me with such a warm sense of happiness it brings a huge smile to my face writing this. For six weeks the sun shone, the hills loomed & happiness followed wherever we went. I want to say it was tough & physically demanding but if it was, I don’t remember.

I do remember all the random places we slept – barns, fields, church halls & strangers’ houses. I remember all the friendly & kind people we met who humbled & inspired us. I remember rivers, fields, forests, towns, cities & the sea. I can’t decide if seeing dolphins in Aberystwyth, coasteering off St Davids or staying on a permaculture farm was my favourite experience – in fact it all was. Even the hills.

I’ve made friends for life, seen things that will stay with me always & proved to everyone that it is possible to get a tan in Wales.

And so life goes on. After Otesha I was filled with a feeling of great satisfaction as if it all suddenly made sense & I knew what I wanted to know. My next project was with a theatre Company called ‘Stuff & Nonsense’ working as a creative assistant for their new show ‘The Enormous Turnip’.  I had another incredible experience working on this show & even to this day, the reviews keep coming in thick & fast with the latest informing us that it was Jackson’s Lane best selling Christmas show in their 35 year history.

As a firm believer in everything happening for a reason, I found myself going on yet another journey after this, although this time as ‘Youth Arts Development Manager’ for Hampshire Museums and Galleries Trust, working on a specific project called The EDGE Project; Engage, Discover, Generate, Enthusiasm.

I was chosen to lead a three year programme of events, exhibitions & performances for & by young people in various locations across Hampshire. The brief was as broad as I wanted it to be – I’m given freedom to deliver & create what young people want to do & see in these venues. I’ve hosted band nights & exhibitions, music workshops & fashion projects.

But by far my most important & biggest project to date has been GreenSpace. A couple of my young volunteers came to me with an idea to create an allotment. My ears instantly pricked up with excitement as I knew the idea had room to grow (excuse the pun!).  I approached a local Art Gallery I was working with & GreenSpace was born.

November 2010 saw our first day on site clearing an area covered in brambles at the back of the venue. 26 people turned up to help the first day. After that it was planning & implementing the next stage.

The young people designed it to look as creative as possible, as well as having full disabled access & being practical. Donations were sought from all over the local area, including 32 planks, 20 tons of soil, various plants, child friendly wood chip & 2 compost bins. Subsequent donations saw us add to site with water butts, as well as being able to purchase tools for volunteers.

Over the course of 2010 we engaged with around 300+ people. We ran maintenance days, planting days, green workshops for children & young people. We had an extensive launch & registered as part of the Eden Project’s Big Lunch-with every event operating a ‘Bring n’ Share’ Lunch. We held a green exhibition, with 120 young people from the area exhibiting their green work. A harvest Supper & Art Cracker event saw us through to the end of the year & on to 2012.

We have now started our second site at a local art centre, with our next day planned for a few weeks’ time. We received more donations & funding to expand & are planning many more sites for the future. We’ve helped to educate young & old about gardening, sustainability, recycling, growing your own & much more. (Check out GreenSpace’s Facebook and Twitter.)

To ask whether Otesha influenced me in shaping this project? I can safely say, 100%, it most definitely has.

If you’re feeling inspired to join a six-week Otesha world-changing adventure you can find out more and apply here. See you on the road!


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Posted in alumni adventures, cycle tours | No Comments »

Three Little Pigs

21st January 2012 by

Click for the full size image. More cartoons here.


Posted in built environment, DIY, energy, random | No Comments »

How to get a job you love (and that loves you)

20th January 2012 by

We’ve been doing a lot of hiring at Otesha recently, so we’ve pulled together our collective wisdom to bring you a few tips for getting a job you love in an organisation that will love you back.

  • You’re sending the application to a person, not a Sir/Madam, so use their name. If you’re not sure who to address your application to, call up and ask.
  • Read everything you can about the organisation and the role before you apply.
  • The covering letter is the key thing. After reading your letter we should know if we want to interview you or not. Your CV should back up everything you say in your covering letter, but it’s only a supporting document.
  • Otesha is a pretty informal organisation – we like covering letters that sound like real people wrote them, ones that will make us smile when we read them. Not all organisations will appreciate such an informal approach, but no one wants to read a letter that could’ve been written by a computer.
  • At Otesha, the first thing we want to know is why you want to work here and what you think is special about this organisation.
  • The second thing we want to know about you is why you really really really want to do the role you’re applying for.
  • It’s helpful to address every point in the person specification in the order they appear in the job posting. Imagine it’s the early hours of the morning and you’re desperately trying to get 100 applications down to a shortlist of 20. The easier you can make it for the person reading your application the better.
  • Your covering letter should usually be 1-2 sides long. Any shorter and we’re wondering why you don’t have the enthusiasm or experience to fill a page. Any longer and we think that you’re not able to communicate in a concise manner.
  • Don’t just tell us that you have ‘experience working in a team’ – we need to know where, how etc. Back up everything with clear examples of your experience.
  • Voluntary experience is just as valid as paid work experience.
  • End your letter telling us anything else great about you that might be relevant to the role.
  • Don’t bother sending off generic applications. We can tell if we’re receiving the same application you sent off for a different job last week! If you’re not interested enough to write a new cover letter, I’m afraid we’re probably not interested either.
  • Be meticulous, get someone to proof read your cover letter and CV. If the job specification asks for excellent written skills, your application needs to be excellently written.


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Posted in green our jobs | 1 Comment »

Go west, young man! So he did.

18th January 2012 by

Matt Wicks has been writing about his life-changing experience on our Wild West 2008 cycle tour for our friends at the splendid Do the Green Thing, who hit on the brilliant idea of telling the personal stories of people who have had incredible travel adventures without getting on an aeroplane. Here’s what Matt had to say.

Back in 2008 I saw an advert for the ‘Wild West’ cycle tour. I applied, raised sponsorship, and in August found myself in a field in Brigstock, where I met the 17 other participants. I was excited but nervous – I had never done anything like this before and was way outside my comfort zone.

My main interest was cycling. The previous summer I had cycled to Paris with friends and had a lot of fun. I also already had a keen passion for the environment, and was lucky to be able to take six weeks off from my job as an energy advisor. The tour turned out to be a great opportunity to meet new people and share experiences and knowledge.

For the next six weeks I worked, played, cooked, ate, and cycled with such a loving, interesting and fun group of people – everyone very different, but equally passionate about wanting to make positive change in the world. Friends for life.

Along the 700 mile journey we met so many inspiring and generous people, we camped in some wonderful locations, and ate so many fantastic meals. We performed and held workshops at schools, and at youth groups, communities and festivals through the Midlands and Wales. As a group we learnt about sustainable living through skill sharing, and through visiting permaculture farms, social enterprises and one Tracey Island style energy research centre. We also learnt about bike maintenance, cooking for large groups and consensus decision making.

At the end of each day, as a group we shared our highs and lows. The concept of sharing emotions and experiences in this way was something I was not used to, and almost alien in society today, but it was something that became very valuable. There were so many highs of the tour, and of course a few lows, but even the lows, when you look back, really added to the experience, to the adventure.

Although the tours are run and organised by the Otesha team, you still have great room to influence and shape the way the groups lives, from the food you eat to the route you take. We cycled in groups of four or five carrying everything we needed in panniers and our three trailers named Bob, Not Bob and the Slug. What freedom!

Our first week of cycling was pretty intense. We travelled all the way from Brigstock in the East Midlands to Crickhowell in the Brecon Beacons, some 150 miles as the crow flies. I think we probably cycled almost double that as we weaved are way with visits to projects in Leicester, Coventry, Worcester en route.

We arrived in Crickhowell for the the Green Man Festival where we were due to perform our play only for the second time since training week. All went well (apart from the rain and mud!), we sang, danced, and had much merriment. From there we headed to St David’s in Pembrokeshire, then to Carmarthen, Swansea and finally Merthyr Tydfil.

For me the most daunting part was performing the ‘Morning Choices’ play. I was no theatrical type, in fact I was so worried about this side of the cycle tour that I blanked it from my mind – well, until training week anyway. I did it, and although I may not be found at the local dramatic society just yet, this was a great experience. The buzz of performing was something I had never felt before, at least not since my year 6 school assembly!

Since taking part in the Otesha tour I have joined the board of trustees. I have continued cycle touring, and I have been involved in a number of local projects. I will always look back with great fondness on the Wild West tour 2008.

If you would like to sign up for one of our extraordinary summer 2012 cycle tours, click here.

Matt’s article is also available here. If you’re after still more inspiring travel stories, you can also read about a bike ride to Morocco and a Pacific sailing adventure.

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Posted in alumni adventures, cycle tours, Otesha's adventures, travel & transport | No Comments »

Biofuels: the choice between petrol and beefburgers

13th January 2012 by

When I was little I used to know a man who ran a car on used vegetable oil. As a 10 year old this fascinated me- it was beyond my wildest imagination that you can make a car go on skanky old oil scrounged from the chippy.

As the monumental reality settled in that the world would one day run out of oil (cue childish fantasies of a post-apocalyptic society where we would all have to cook our pet cats over bonfires made from old furniture because we couldn’t drive to the shop) I began to think that making oil out of vegetables was the best idea since Lego. My brother and I spent many an evening poring over maps, plotting our route to Timbuktu via as many chip shops as possible, once we’d converted the family car to guzzle vegetables.

In hindsight, I now realise that it’s not possible to fuel the worlds estimated 800 million cars on old vegetable oil alone – NOBODY could eat that many chips. Luckily, some smart people in the energy industry came up with idea of growing plants such as corn or sugarcane, specially to turn into bioethanol fuel through fermentation.

On paper this seems like an excellent idea- we can avert an energy crisis (no more burning the antique coffee table out of desperation) using a sustainable fuel supply which is a lot less damaging to the climate than fossil fuels. Infact, it was such a good idea that over 2.7% of all road transport now uses biofuel to keep the world’s wheels going.

However, biofuels are marred by controversy, becoming an example used by the environmental movement of a misguided policy used by governments to greenwash ‘business as normal’.

The biggest problem biofuels present is that they compete for land usually used for growing food. In a world where human populations are hurtling towards 7 billion and with almost 1 billion are in constant hunger, we really need to critically examine which is more important- well fed people or well oiled motors?

There have been many vehement reports of the effects of biofuels on world hunger. Numerous articles state biofuel production as a major factor in the 07/08 global food crisis, in which increased competition for agricultural land pushed up prices way above the means of many resulting in global riots, political instability and starvation. One leaked World Bank report implies that the US and UK government targets on increasing biofuel use has pushed world food prices up by 75%, pushing 100m people below the poverty line.

So should we write biofuels off as a very bad idea? According to Zero Carbon Britain, a future energy strategy designed by the Centre for Alternative Technology, biofuels have their rightful place in a sustainable energy plan. In fact, they go so far to suggest that 1.67 million hectares (about 7% of UK’s total land area, including urban and mountainous areas) should be dedicated to transport biofuel.

When I first heard this I was couldn’t help thinking they were a tad misguided. But actually what the Zero Carbon Britain report advocates is the sensible use of land. UK agriculture currently takes up about 16 million hectares of land, of which 11 hectares is dedicated to livestock and another 5 million to livestock feed. Arable crops are notoriously more efficient at feeding humans than livestock, so by reducing the nation’s meat consumption and switching to a arable based diet, more land would be freed up for fuel production. Also, a new form of 2nd generation biofuels are being produced, which can grow on more degraded land that isn’t prime arable land.

'I'd rather be a vegetable'

I know that the idea that biofuels might have a place in our zero carbon future is slightly controversial – indeed I’ve received an interesting (!) reaction by suggesting it in our office. There are a litany of arguments that instead we should stop relying on energy for transport altogether. But the debate about land use is an interesting one and really needs to be thought about carefully if we want to really fairly share the resources that the planet can provide for a sustainable future. But faced with the choice what would you choose – petrol or meat?


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Teacher on tour

3rd January 2012 by

This summer’s Tastetastic! cycle tour is open to all ages over 18, and we’ve timed it so that any teachers in England and Wales who want to take part can volunteer. Chris Hardy, a teacher at Fulham Cross Girls’ School, tells us about his experience on tour and what it has brought to his day-to-day life, including his teaching.

I went on Otesha’s Wild West cycle tour in 2008, shortly before beginning my teacher training – and taking part in an Otesha cycle tour wasn’t only an amazing experience in itself, but it was hugely beneficial as a teacher.

Teacher Chris Hardy helps build an earthen structure while volunteering on cycle tour in 2008

I learned a huge number of skills in a short space of time. Not theoretical skills about behaviour management or educational theory, but real life skills about how to deal with a room full of people, how to grab people’s attention and how to get your message across in an engaging and entertaining way. Now I can bring that back to the classroom, it’s given me some valuable new tools and techniques.

As a tour member, you spend time living in a community, learn consensus decision making and cooking for large groups – brilliant skills for a teacher to have, and useful in your everyday life when tackling disagreements or making choices and decisions with others – including in the classroom.

You also learn how to plan and deliver a short play about sustainable life choices. This play is followed by various workshops, all of which you learn how to deliver on cycle tour.

They are mini lessons which are designed to be hands-on, engaging and educational. Having this experience before or during time teaching is invaluable and something I’m still thankful for now, two years on in my teaching career. It has given me flexibility and confidence in lesson planning and encouraged me to set up my own after-school activities and clubs.

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Happy… Alban Arthuan!

22nd December 2011 by

I had a very godless upbringing. Raised by two lapsed Christians (of different denominations), Christmas was never, for us, imbued with religious or spiritual significance. It was a time for presents, get-togethers and feasting. (And the greatest of these was presents.)

Apart from the rampant consumerism, there’s not much wrong with this, and I don’t begrudge anyone their Christmas, but that lack of a real anchoring by strong belief means I’ve been feeling less and less able to identify with Christmas, and the uncomfortable feeling that I’m a heathen interloper squatting in someone else’s festival has grown unignorable.

But ditching Christmas leaves a couple of issues unresolved. First, there’s a good reason why most traditions have a midwinter festival: we need cheering up when in the pit of the darkest, dampest part of the year.

Second, I’ve begun to feel that ritual, whether religious or otherwise, might play a much more important part in our sense of groundedness and well-being than I’d suspected. That revelation was a bit of hard sell for me at first, being the arch-eyebrowed secular sceptic I am (was?).

So this year my partner and I decided to mark the winter solstice in some way, suspecting that it actually chimed a great deal with how we actually saw the world and the way we draw meaning from it: the importance of the seasons, of the sun and of the circular flow of life. [*Bursts into Lion King theme song*] A bit of internet research suggested this hunch was right.

You could go the whole hog and make a very elaborate celebration. Since talking to others about it, I’ve heard of an incredible variety of ways that people mark the solstice, mostly in an improvised and very personal way. One friend walks through the night of solstice with the same friend each year. Others write notes of their regrets or things they would like to leave behind, and then burn them. Still others embrace more formal druidic traditions. But as first-timers, a little embarrassed at trying to create a tradition from scratch, we kept it basic.

We gathered some evergreen fronds (great word) from the neighbourhood and decorated the living room (evergreens represent the fact that, contrary to appearances, life still goes on even in the depths of winter). We made a sun decoration, golden on one side and pitch black on the other, which spins on a thread, turning from shining to dark as it turns in the air currents, a reminder that we’re moving from the darkening to the lightening phase of the year. And we lit some candles.

You’ll notice that this, to the untrained eye, looks quite a lot like Christmas. That is, of course, because Christianity borrowed and adapted a great deal of pre-existing rituals. But to mark them and acknowledge them as they were originally meant was a surprisingly powerful experience (particularly the active effort of gathering and decorating), and I was left wishing that the meaning of the evergreens and other borrowed traditions had been explained to me during childhood Christmases.

It could have been an awe-inspiring and magical experience for a child to have those meanings spelled out: the notion of this mindbogglingly large ball spinning in space,  tilting towards and away from the sun; the dormancy of life under the frozen ground quietly biding its time.

Still, better late than never. And we have something to build on for next year (and perhaps other seasonal turning points). And for the first time in a long time, I’ve felt I’ve drawn some personal meaning from a midwinter festival. Enjoy your own, whether solstice, Christmas, Hanukah or whatever it is that grounds you and cheers you at this time of year.

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Power to the people

20th December 2011 by

Are workers’ cooperatives the way forward in creating green & decent jobs?

As Hanna mentioned in her recent blog, one of the biggest challenges our Greener Jobs Pipeline project faces is convincing employers to take on young and ‘untested’ apprentices.

So of course the obvious solution is to take on job creation ourselves by becoming employers, preferably creating jobs where the employees have a real stake in the business, are paid living wages and have opportunities for career advancement! Easy peasy. Ha.

Before you call me an unrealistic idealist, this model does exist. It’s out there and it’s actually working. And yes, it’s even working in the middle of a recession. It’s working in Spain, in Venezuela, in the UK and in even in TV-land.

I recently came across a really inspiring American example, Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio. The explicit goal of this inter-linked set of cooperatives is to employ local people while building thriving, profitable businesses. Evergreen is based in a poor, mostly black area of Cleveland, where the median income is less than $19,000 (£11,800). In 2009, they launched two worker-owned businesses: Evergreen Cooperative Laundry and Ohio Solar. They’re also in the process of breaking ground on a year-round hydroponic food growing project, Green City Growers.

Basically, I love everything about them. They’re employee-owned, profitable, green and all about spreading wealth rather than just creating jobs. In mainstream business-as-usual, that’s subversive stuff.

Why does it work?

  • Money talks. Evergreen received a big cash injection to get going. For example, the start-up costs for Evergreen Cooperative Laundry were $5.7million (£3.6 million), contributed from national and local government bodies, tax credits, a community foundation and two banks.
  • Contractor buy-in from the start. Several of the project’s ‘anchor organisations’ that helped get it up and running are now large contractors for their services, including the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals. The laundry business scored two big nursing home contracts pretty quickly, and Ohio Solar has been busy weatherizing and installing PV panels on buildings belonging to almost all the anchor organisations. In fact, the whole project was convened by the Cleveland Foundation when they set out to answer the question “why is it that so few benefits and so little wealth from our most profitable local institutions are flowing to local people?“
  • Well trained staff. Evergreen recruits their workers from a local charity called Towards Employment, which provides all sorts of job readiness training for local residents. They also hired expert management and technical skills from outside the community to help get the cooperatives up and running.
  • Big ambition combined with realistic short-term goals. They want to seed a network of inter-related cooperatives, eventually employing around 5,000 people, but they’ve got the good sense to start small and test things out. As far as I can tell, so far they’re employing around 22 people (15 at the laundry and 7 at Ohio Solar) with plans to grow to around 50 per cooperative. Each business has also committed to put 10% of its profits back into a Cooperative Development Fund to help launch more social enterprises.

That’s not to say that they don’t have their challenges as well. It’ll be interesting to see how well these businesses thrive and grow over the long run, especially when they start looking for clients beyond the initial anchor organisations, and whether they eventually manage to hand over the management to community members instead of the outside experts who were initially hired.

But no matter what, Evergreen has been successful in creating green and decent jobs for Cleveland’s residents. On any scale, that’s a success in my books!

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New year, new life for your festive waste

20th December 2011 by

We’ve been talking a lot about upcycling lately here, so it’s just got to be the theme of your monthly challenge.

If there’s ever a time when reusable waste gets sent in mind-boggling amounts to the landfill site, it’s post-Christmas. But as it’s Christmas, new year and winter solstice… what could be more appropriate than reflecting themes running through all of those festivals by giving new life to something?

Wrapping paper’s the obvious place to start – there is so much of it and so much you can make from it: why not shred your used or damaged giftwrap to make colourful protective packaging for a future gift? Or shred again for confetti. Wrapping paper can make some nifty outfits for paper dolls. Or even jewellery.

Or use it to make beautifully patterned origami – you could create a new post-Christmas tradition that by New Year’s Day your home will welcome the new year by being adorned with carefully crafted paper-folded birds.

Other Christmas waste is also brilliant for craft projects: tin foil from mince pies can become tree decorations; cards and cardboard are always reusable – here’s a nice idea using old playing cards to create notebooks, which could just as easily use greetings cards. Or make next year’s tree-top ornament.

Most homes, let’s face it, are going to have a fair number of empty wine bottles left after the festivities. Instead of sending them for recycling, why not go one better and make some beautiful ornaments? And don’t forget you can upcycle your corks, too.

And saving the best for last…

Is your once-trusty old Twister mat well past its useful life and been replaced by a new one this year? Here’s one way for the, er, fashion-forward among you to give it a second life.


We’d love to hear about or see your creations, so send them in to us at gavin@otesha.org.uk.

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Posted in DIY, monthly challenge, reduce reuse | No Comments »

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