Welsh community launches turbine share offer on Go Green Day

The community benefit society is backing climate change charity Size of Wales in a bid to raise funds to protect a stretch of rainforest

The directors of community energy project YnNi Teg will join a national day of action on Friday, 13 October, to support climate change charity Size of Wales.

Go Green Day – which will raise funds to protect an area of rainforest twice the size of Wales – will also see the organisation launch a community share offer for its wind turbine project in Carmarthenshire.

YnTi Teg is working to bring more community energy to Wales

The offer will be launched at the Tramshed venue in Cardiff during the evening celebration of the charity day, which will see fundraisers held across Wales.

Rob Proctor, director of YnNi Teg, said: “On Go Green Day, we will be taking part in a sponsored bike ride from our wind turbine in Meidrim, Carmarthenshire, all the way to Cardiff – a total of about 90 miles.

“We will be dressed in green so it’ll be easy to spot us en route. When we arrive in Cardiff, we will be officially launching our community share offer.”

Rita Singh, director of Size of Wales, said: “Lots of businesses are planning to Go Green by holding office bake sales or cycling to work competitions all up and down the country, and we’re delighted to be working alongside YnNi Teg to help them launch their share offer. Best of all, all the money raised in Wales will be doubled by our match fund.”

The money raised for Size of Wales will be spent on a range of activities that will help protect tropical forests – from buying tree seedlings, to funding and training biomonitoring teams and supporting local communities to develop sustainable livelihoods, to lobbying for land ownership rights for indigenous communities.

Work includes a bid to plant 10 million trees in Uganda, protection for gorillas and forests in DR Congo, securing Ogiek ancestral lands and livelihoods in Kenya, and securing the territory of the Wampi people in Peru.

The world’s tropical forests absorb almost a fifth of the world’s man-made carbon dioxide emissions and one of Size of Wales’ main aims is to raise awareness of the importance of forest protection, as part of our national response to climate change.

• You can sponsor the YnNi Teg team here.