Year 4 & 5 pupils from St David’s School in Exeter off to meet some water voles. Image by: Paul Martin.
Bellingham shoppers - Ratty needs you
As more people emerge from lockdown, Northumberland Wildlife Trust is calling on Co-op shoppers in Bellingham to keep supporting the region’s water voles via the Co-op Local Community Fund.
The Restoring Ratty project, funded by the National Lottery via a grant of £421,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, began in 2016 with the aim of restoring water voles back to Kielder and since June 2017, 1498 of the adorable little animals have been released.
A new batch of water voles are due to be released in the next couple of weeks, having spent lockdown languishing in a captive breeding center in Devon.
Each time a member shops at their local Co-op store throughout the UK, 1% of what they spend on selected own-brand products and service goes to the Local Community Fund. Members can then go online and select which cause they want their own 1% to go to, with the money raised together with money from carrier bag sales helping local projects.
Every year the Co-op Group chooses a new list of local causes, and in October 2019 the Kielder project, based at Kielder Castle, was selected to receive Co-op Membership funds from shoppers at its Bellingham store, until November 2020.
All money the project receives will be used to take school children, Brownies and youth groups from the Kielder area onto the site to learn more about the wonderful, watery world of water voles.
So far, the project has engaged with almost 1,000 children from inner city Newcastle as well as local schools such as Bellingham Middle School and Kielder Primary School. Schools from further afield in Yorkshire and Devon have also got involved.
Speaking about the Restoring Ratty project being one of the local causes, Kelly Hollings Restoring Ratty Project officer said: “This is wonderful news for us. As a Bellingham shopper, the Bellingham Co-op is a real hub of the community and vital to people living in the area and never more so than over the past three months.
“Restoring Ratty has an ambitious goal of engaging with 250,000 and the Co-op funding will go some way towards making this goal a reality, so come on shoppers, help us lift the spirits of children and young people who have had such a disrupted start to the year.”
Visit https://membership.coop.co.uk/causes/36848 and pledge your support to Ratty.
For an insight into the project’s school engagement programme, brighten your day with the brilliant four-minute YouTube film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLoJuyc-f4Q”