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2030 Vision project: Postponing the Visioning Event.

We have been working flat out to get ready for the big 2030 community visioning event planned for Weds 25 March. Nearly 40 different community groups, schools, churches and local businesses had been approached to take part. The responses we were getting were most encouraging - people wanted to get involved. All three Parish Councils were on board, and last week we held a successful trial run of the visioning exercise with an enthusiastic group of students from the Steyning Grammar School Eco Council (see below).

But we have had a rethink. After consulting with the organising group we decided we should put the event on hold until the Autumn. There are several reasons:

A. Many meetings are already being cancelled or postponed due to the risk of spreading the virus. We expect the situation to get worse in the next few weeks so quite a few people would understandably be nervous of attending and the turnout would be low.

B. The visioning event was designed to kick off a longer term project, and we wanted to follow it up with other meetings, film nights and other events focusing on specific areas like energy or transport. This is a very bad time to start an initiative that depends on loads of meetings.
 
C. We want to engage and involve lots of people who are not necessarily "green", and they will now be preoccupied with the virus on top of work, family and everyday demands. It would be hard to get people to focus on climate issues right now.

The 2030 Vision project is a major undertaking over 10 years and we need as many people as possible behind it. Timing is everything, especially at the start. So we've made the difficult judgement that the project will be more successful if we delay it until the Autumn.
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