St Mary's has achieved the Eco Church Silver Award! Well done team, this is great news.
I'd like to copy the email received from Eco Church in recognition of our brilliant achievement.
Thank you for your application for a Silver Eco Church Award.
I have checked your survey scores and am delighted to confirm your award. Well done to everyone involved in reaching this milestone! Please do share this email with your wider Eco Church team, as well as other church leaders and community, as appropriate. Attached is a certificate for you to print out and display in your church or to share during your next church service and via your church's social media.
Our overall aim of the Eco Church award scheme is to celebrate the ways that church communities have been engaging with caring for the earth as a key part of our Christian faith. As a silver-awarded Eco Church, we encourage you to celebrate your award achievement and to share about your Eco Church journey on your website or social media pages. To do this, you may like to add the attached website badge; you'll just need to add a hyperlink to the Eco Church website here: ecochurch.arocha.org.uk.
Thank you for taking the time to provide us with such incredible in-depth comments to support your application. This was so helpful for understanding your church context and so encouraging for us to hear more details of your eco church journey and hear about all the activities you have participated in. I would love to comment on everything you have written, but in particular, it is great to hear you have such an enthusiastic eco group (reflected so well through your additional comments), and it is brilliant to hear that you feel that the ethos of Eco Church is a reflection of who you are as a church. I enjoyed hearing more about the land you are responsible for, that you have worked hard developing a land management plan, and that the eco group took over stewardship of Oak Lane Cemetery - amongst so much else. I hope writing everything out was a helpful exercise to reflect on your Eco Church journey so far. We'd encourage you to adapt some of this for your website, to share your story and all you have done as an Eco Church. I will get in touch later in the summer (I am about to go on leave until July) as I'd love to use your story on our Eco Church stories page. We can adapt some of your additional comments into a story format, if you'd be happy with this, to encourage other churches.
