Our purpose: To inspire and promote, connect and support community-led action in Scotland to address the Climate Emergency.

We do this by:

• Enabling communications across the network e.g. through newsletters, opportunities for members to be part of participatory media projects, events, social media etc.
• Developing and sharing ideas and building capacity in our movement by organising events, gatherings, and trainings related to climate action across the country.
• Being involved with European and worldwide climate action networks and sharing best of practice with our membership
• Inspiring communities by providing online tools for networking, sharing of best practice, and showcasing projects between community groups and beyond.
• Communicating and developing the discourse of community climate action wherever possible including in Scottish Government (through meetings, consultations etc), across social media, through partnering with a wide range of organisations etc.
• Building understanding of the role and potential of communities in climate action within civil society by partnering and collaborating with other Scottish community networks (e.g. through Scottish Community Alliance), public sector, and business.

Our work is also directed by our values:

• Respect for resource limits
• Promotion of inclusivity and social justice
• Attention to individual wellbeing
• Openly sharing our learning and responding to feedback
• Collaborating and looking for synergies
• Being positive and creative

Our vision for Scotland – an outcome from our 2014 members conference.

Our aspirations for how we will seek to work together are outlined here: How we work -aspirations whilst there is more about our non-hierarchical structure and experiments with Sociocracy here.

We are a volunteer run network with Full Membership open to any community group across Scotland that is taking action on the climate crisis and to any organisation that is involved with or supports community-led climate action. Individual membership is open to anyone who is involved with or supports local, community-led action to address the climate emergency. Our volunteer ‘working groups’ and short-life task groups take forward our work plans with support from our part-time, freelance workers. Currently these are a ‘Network Weaver’ who is our first point of contact for members, our ‘Projects Weaver’ who provides overall coordination and administrative support and our ‘Stories Weaver’ who runs or work with stories.

As a community based network, we are active members of the Scottish Community Alliance and, through this, have the opportunity to engage with 25 other community networks that embrace several thousand community organisations across Scotland. We are also actively engaged with the European Ecolise network, including their Communities For Future programme and with the global Transition Network.  These links can help to support and inspire and provide further learning and sharing opportunities for our members as to how best to create the conditions in which community action on the climate and environmental emergencies can thrive -and enable the rapid decarbonisation required whilst creating the sort of future we want.

To enable us to take an enterprising approach to creating the post-carbon future, we are structured as a ‘community interest company’ (SC495995). Our Articles of Association are here.

Background

This background gives more information about how Scottish Communities CAN came about.