Wild Garsdale Pike is a youth led environment project based on 200 acres in Cumbria. We work with young people across north west England aged from 13 - 25 years. They can either join our Youth Steering Group and work with the trustees to decide what changes we make to the land to improve biodiversity or they can come on a one-off visit to learn about the project and help with some of our conservation work.

We work with local schools, youth groups, charities and universities, enabling young people to learn about nature, wildlife and conservation, try out different ideas, make practical changes and assess their effects.

There is plenty of time for discussion, making new friends, gaining skills and confidence, enjoying nature and exploring the wild.

Currently, everything that we do is run by volunteers, we rely on our team of experienced trustees and expert contacts to promote our work, communicate with schools, university and like-minded organisations and lead our workshops and site visits.

We have spent four years building our unique and successful model. To enable us to grow we need to move beyond what we can do with just our trustees and supporters, we need to employ someone with expertise in community engagement, who will enable us to connect with a bigger and more diverse audience.

We will use your donation to employ a part-time community engagement officer working 2 days a week to connect with schools, youth groups, after school clubs and local community groups.

This person will help raise our profile, enabling us to connect with and respond to the needs of different groups, recruit more young people to our Youth Steering Group, support our trustee lead on managing the group and set up more tailor made site visits for schools and community groups.

They will also support our trustees in fundraising to develp both our work with young people and our work to restore and regenerate our land at Garsdale Pike.

Working together with a wider group of young people we will learn about our land and the wider landscape, trial different conservation strategies and record and discuss the results. In the process our land will become richer and more diverse and we will gain new skills and friends and a deeper understanding of nature and our place in it.