The WI is once again campaigning to make waves for clean rivers during the WI Week of River Action between 16th and 22nd September.

WI members are being encouraged to make and support applications to create bathing waters in rivers across England and Wales as a way to drive the clean up of our precious waters.

Living in the beautiful New Forest which is a Special Site of Scientific Interest (SSSI), a Special Area of Conservation (SAC), and a Ramsar site as a Wetland of International Importance, it is especially important that we campaign to protect our rivers in this special area that we live in.

So we have the following planned:

On Monday 16th September it would be good if as many of us as possible do a Litter Pick (as a lot of litter ends up in our rivers and seas). This can either be in and around your neighbourhood or an area of the village that you have noticed could do with a litter pick. Please take a photograph of your bag of litter and send it to us so we can show how much we collect.

Or you can join Julie at a Litter Pick at Balmer Lawn Car Park (AKA Brock Beach) at 2pm on Monday 16th September. There will be a sign-up sheet at the WI meeting on 9th September. Please bring your own litter picker (if you have one) and gloves.

Then on Thursday 19th September, Julie will be leading a walk starting at 2pm from Whitefield Moor car park, off the Rhinefield Road in Brockenhurst. We will walk for about an hour at a pace to suit all. Tea and cakes will be served afterwards (well, we are the WI after all!) There will be a sign-up sheet at the WI meeting on 9th September.

We are inviting local organisations and representatives to join the walk to raise awareness of the state of the local rivers and perhaps see if we can come up with ideas/pool resources about how we can bring about change!

A reporter from the BBC News is hoping to come on the walk and it would be great to get a good turn out from our membership. If you cannot join us for the walk, do join us around 3pm for tea and cake and to chat to our guests. There will be a sign-up sheet at the WI meeting on 9th September.

Then on the afternoon of Friday 20th September, we will be undertaking some ‘Citizen Science’ and we will be taking part in Great UK WaterBlitz and will be undertaking water testing in a few locations around the village. There will be a sign-up sheet at the WI meeting on 9th September.

We will be once again asking members to write to our MP. More about this and other ways to get involved with campaigning to follow.

We are also asking members to come up with ideas for helping to keep our waterways clean. What do you do to help keep rivers clean? What does having clean rivers mean to you? Do you have any ‘Green Cleaning’ recipes? Do you have success with any of Nancy Birtwhistle’s green cleaning recipes? Any contributions would be very much appreciated and will be included in website posts.

Lastly, we would really like each member to decorate a piece of bunting with a river theme of what having clean rivers mean to you. The bunting will be displayed at the walk for photographs and perhaps around the village (if we can find suitable locations). Pieces of bunting and fabric pens will be brought to the meeting on 9th September.

There will also be a ‘bunting workshop’ at 2pm on Wednesday 11th September at Julie’s house (there will be a sign-up sheet at the meeting on 9th). Or you can take a piece of fabric and decorate it in your own home and return to Evelyn by 12th September to give Evelyn time to sew it all together.

Thank you for reading this and we really do hope that you will join us with the above activities. The WI has a rich track record of campaigning against pollution of our rivers, watercourses, and seashores, dating back to the 1930s and sadly, we still need to campaign on this issue.