Conservation Volunteers at 25
28 May 2009
Conservation Volunteers Northern Ireland celebrated its 25th birthday on Friday 22 May. Our parent organisation, BTCV, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, so Friday was a double celebration.
Where it started
Fifty year ago a need to manage land for nature was identified and the “Conservation Corps” was set up to do this. The first practical work took place at Box Hill in Surrey in February 1959.
Volunteers provided an enthusiastic workforce for the recently created national parks and nature reserves. Young people growing up in urban areas could also learn about natural history.
Over the following decades, the Conservation Corps expanded its activities to include urban nature conservation, school grounds projects and community involvement. By the 1980s the organisation operated throughout England, Wales and Scotland and changed its name to BTCV.
Coming to Northern Ireland
During 1983 a member of staff was employed to develop the organisation in Northern Ireland and Conservation Volunteers Northern Ireland was officially launched by Professor David Bellamy in 1984.
From the original office in Belfast, the organisation grew to have offices in Bangor, Coleraine, Castlearchdale in Fermanagh and L’derry. Each of the offices developed projects including volunteering for unemployed people, work with communities to improve their environment, work with schools and young people and provided advice and support to landowners.
Every winter the organisation planted a large numbers of trees. A walled garden at Clandeboye Estate near Bangor became the home of our tree nursery where we now specialise in growing local provenance native trees from tree seed collected in Northern Ireland.
Learning skills to undertake conservation work was also important and an environmental training centre was established at Clandeboye Estate. This centre is approved to deliver accredited qualifications with City & Guilds the awarding body.
Where we are now
Conservation Volunteers Northern Ireland has grown and expanded to work across all of Northern Ireland, making our local environment a better place for everyone. A few of our successes include:
We work with 20,000 people of all ages and backgrounds every year, improving Northern Ireland’s urban and rural environments
We have planted over 4 million trees across Northern Ireland, including our highly successful Millennium Tree Campaign, which planted a tree for every person in Northern Ireland to mark the new century
We have improved the quality of the environment and biodiversity at thousands of sites across Northern Ireland
We have invested in educating tens of thousands of young people to love and care for the environment, investing in future generations
We have provided training and qualifications to thousands of people, helping them understand how to manage the environment and also improve their employability
We pioneered the Green Gym in Northern Ireland as an exciting and dynamic way to better health and a better environment.
The organisation’s Chief Executive, Tom Flood, says: “So much has changed in the first fifty years of our history, yet our core values remain the same – to inspire people and improve places. We want to celebrate our anniversary by showing what a difference green volunteering has made and does make to our lives and the environments we live in”.
Sir David Attenborough, a vice president of the charity, says, “Volunteering brings together people from all walks of life and gives them a common purpose – to learn about, to understand and become part of the natural world. They volunteer not just because they want to bring about change to their local environment, but because it’s fun – it gets you outdoors, it makes you fit and you’re learning something new all the time. We are working hard to make that happen.”