Our annual event (as part of National Interfaith Week) to bring faith communities together to take action on the climate emergency.

In June 2019, Birmingham City Council declared a ‘climate emergency’. The emergency declaration commits the council to ‘taking communities with us’ in seeking to be net zero by 2030. But how can this be achieved?

This year’s Tread Lightly conference will be an attempt to answer that question, by engaging with diverse stakeholders in one local area of Birmingham, to discover what concerns people have, and how that relates to the climate emergency.

Programme

1.30 Optional Tour of Shree Ram Mandir. We are pleased that this will be our first major Footsteps event at a Hindu venue.

2:00 Presentations & Discussions

• Cllr Waseem Zaffar, Cabinet Member for Transport and the Environment: The Birmingham Climate Emergency and Sparkbrook;
• SEWA (Selfless Efforts for Welfare of All) Sewa UK is a humanitarian non-profit service organization;
• Plus speakers from local environmental and community initiatives – transport, air pollution, health, green spaces.

Followed by a faith and environment community fair with bases where you can learn, have fun, get ideas and meet other groups that taking action.

4:30 Food – Gujarati vegetarian meal provided by the Mandir volunteer cooks.

Who is Tread Lightly aimed at?

• Community leaders/gatekeepers – teachers, community workers, community leaders, faith leaders,
• People already active on climate emergency (campaign groups, faith communities, councillors, interested individuals)
• Existing local community initiatives / projects with the potential to also engage with the Council’s net zero agenda (e.g. Food Banks, etc)
• Anybody interested or having something to contribute to exploring how to engage effectively with local communities.