Supporting local communities to look after our natural environment in Cornwall, get ready for extreme weather events, and create healthy, resilient neighbourhoods where people and nature can thrive.

What is Volunteer Cornwall Doing? | Health & Climate Resilience Programme | Supporting the VCSE to be Climate Ready | Partnerships & Collaboration | Delivering Innovation & Health Creation Projects | Climate Resilience Training & Capacity Building | Looking for Environmental Volunteering Opportunities?

What is Volunteer Cornwall doing?

Volunteer Cornwall has a highly skilled team of climate professionals, dedicated to bringing about transformational change through leadership and advocacy;

As a key infrastructure organisation, Volunteer Cornwall is committed to;

• Lead by example becoming a centre of excellence for health and climate resilience.
• Support primary care and the wider integrated health and care system to implement climate resilience and ecological action work programmes including local support networks for sickness prevention and health creation.
• Take a lead role in the sector on climate adaptation, resilience and emergency preparedness as a core building block of neighbourhood climate resilience.
• Deliver innovative health and climate pilot projects and interventions e.g. WellFed
• Provide training and capacity building to primary care and VCSE on climate resilience.

In 2019 Volunteer Cornwall declared a Climate and Ecological Emergency.

You can read our Climate Emergency Pledge, Environment Policy and Climate and Ecological Emergency Policy via the links below:

Volunteer Cornwall - Climate Change Emergency Pledge

Sustainability, Climate and Ecological Emergency Policy 2022

Health & Climate Resilience Programme

Our climate is changing and it’s showing up in extreme weather events, and impacts on nature. These changes are impacting our buildings, our infrastructure, our supply chains, our energy and water supplies, our food production, but crucially, our changing climate affects our health.  

The NHS 10 Year Plan, supported by Greener NHS has set a strategic objective to achieve net zero by 2040 to begin to tackle these key issues.

There are three key areas we need to focus on;

• Reducing our environmental impacts across primary care, so we are contributing to the solution, not the cause of the problem.
• Adapting to our changing climate, so our buildings and our patients can cope during extreme weather events.
• Leading by example in health creation to reduce preventable disease, improve the health of our people and communities, and reduce the demand for carbon intensive healthcare.

Funded by Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly ICB, Volunteer Cornwall’s Primary Care Climate Resilience Team has been working to accelerate awareness, inspire action and bring about transformative change supporting primary care, our integrated neighbourhood teams, wider integrated health system and local community hubs to deliver the South West Peninsula Green Plan.

For more information about the Health and Climate Resilience Programme, please visit www.healthandclimate.org.uk or email the Climate Resilience Programme Manager

Supporting the VCSE to be Climate Ready

A changing climate shows up as more extreme weather events, increasingly damaging our precious nature systems,  health of our communities and our citizens, and crucially for us all, the ability of our VCSE (Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Sector) to cope with the consequences of our increasing extreme weather events and keep doing the extraordinary work we all do.

And given that this sector is a critical part of how we keep communities well and safe, we need to make sure we’re prepared for these events; that we can respond effectively when they arrive; and that we can recover fast afterwards.

Climate breakdown will continue to impact us, beyond the next single heatwave, or drought, or storm, or flood; or the energy, logistics, transport, supply chain, or health impacts it will bring.

Making sure we can cope with each single event means we’re better prepared for the wider changes we’re now seeing across Cornwall.

Volunteer Cornwall is leading the discussion on how we get to grips with getting prepared for extreme weather events and their impacts on our people, our places and our organizational activities and processes.

This work is being supported by Cornwall Council Public Health team and works closely with Cornwall Council Local Resilience Forum members and the Emergency Planning team, and the VSF Climate and Environment Alliance.

For more information, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Partnerships & Collaboration

Volunteer Cornwall is working with local VCSE partners, the wider integrated health and care system, academics and statutory agencies such as Natural England to fully understand the impacts of our changing climate on our health, the health of our neighbourhoods, and how we can adapt and prepare for increased climate related events ensuring our communities are resilient to the impacts of climate change.

If you are keen to work with us, please contact the Climate Resilience Programme Manager

Delivering Innovation & Health Creation Projects

Volunteer Cornwall is leading the way in the delivery of innovative health creation programmes and is keen to work with partners to identify wider health creation projects, which promote health and wellbeing, alongside reducing our impact on the environment, particularly around sustainable food, active travel and green spaces for health.

Volunteer Cornwall leads the delivery of the WellFed Programme, an NHS and Public Health funded innovative test and learn pilot research initiative supporting people at risk of or with early-stage type 2 diabetes by providing weekly free boxes of agroecologically grown vegetables from local community farms.

For more information on WellFed, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit WellFed – Health and Climate Resilience | Volunteer Cornwall

Climate Resilience Training & Capacity Building

We are currently reviewing our training and capacity building offer for healthcare and the VCSE sector.

If you have any climate resilience training needs please email the Climate Resilience Programme Manager

Looking for Environmental Volunteering Opportunities?

Environmental volunteering gives you the chance to work with a number of charities and organisations in Cornwall (and you get to work around some of the best scenery in the UK).

You could try your hand at growing local food, footpath clearing along the hundreds of miles of paths and byways, restore a site to its natural beauty, work on resource and waste projects or help conservationists count how many species of insects there are in a certain area.

As well as meeting new people you will also gain invaluable experience and there may also be opportunities to gain some certificates and qualifications along the way. This could help open up possibilities of an ongoing volunteer position or even lead to establishing your own social enterprise or a new career.

If you want to get involved in some environmental or outdoors volunteering, we've setup a handy site which brings together lots of different opportunities in one place - click here for more details.

Some local charities and organisations which offer environmental volunteering include;  

• Cornwall Community Flood Forum – Flood Training and Information in Cornwall– Find out if you have a local Flood Group and see if they need any volunteers.
• Cornish Ancient Sites
• Cornwall Butterfly Conservation
• Cornwall Council / Cormac
• Cornwall Heritage Trust
• Cornwall Wildlife Trust
• Eden Project
• Friends of the Earth
• National Trust
• Newquay Community Orchard
• RSPB
• South West Lakes Trust
• Sustainable Trust
• Tamar Valley AONB

You can find out more about the work of groups like Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion  who offer a mixture of campaigning and direct action.

 

.