Westcountry Rivers Champions
Our rivers are the life blood of our communities and the level of public interest in their plight has never been so great.
Whether it is the impacts of sewage from water companies, the loss of nutrients and soils from agriculture, or the increasing pressure from climate change, our rivers are under threat.
While the Westcountry Rivers Trust has been working tirelessly in the background over the past 30 years to successfully protect our rivers, we must dial up action and capitalise on broad public support to achieve more.
A part of this is our opportunity for you to become a Westcountry Rivers Champion.
As a Westcountry Rivers Champion, you will be supporting our newly launched (June 2024) Education & Engagement Fund.
Through this, we plan to support communities in developing an authentic local voice for their river.
We will do this by working with schools and community groups, using science to further their understanding of their river, building and supporting volunteer bases for direct action, and helping them celebrate and communicate what is great about our region’s amazing rivers.
But we need your help to do so.
By creating an individual living legacy of £5,000 a year for five years, or as a corporation, donating an equivalent or greater sum to our longer-term investment fund, you will be helping to nurture a love for rivers and bolster the future of freshwater environments for generations to come.
Our intention is to have 10 Champions at any time to secure a full-time Education Officer (£50k per year), whose purpose is to run educational activities and create educational resources that build capacity and capability within river communities.
They will also seek wider grant funding to build a team to unlock more action, as well as further expand the Education and Engagement Fund.
If we have more funding than required, we will support the wider aims and projects of the Trust.
Westcountry Rivers Trust has invested £50,000 into this fund in 2024 and has committed the same again in 2025 to implement the Education Officer role.
You financial contribution will put the programme and activities on a sustainable long-term footing.
Recognition for your support
- An annual Education & Engagement Fund Impact Statement highlighting how your donation is making a positive difference.
- The option as a corporate group to receive advice on understanding, reducing and mitigating the business impact on the environment.
- An invite to an annual Westcountry Rivers Champions’ event.
To discuss this opportunity in more detail and arrange a meeting with our CEO Dr Laurence Couldrick, please click the button to get in touch.
- Use of our Westcountry Rivers Champions logo on your website/email footer.
- Your company logo and click through on our website.
- Promotion opportunities in the press and social media.
- A blog post on Westcountry Rivers Trust’s website.
- A supporter pin badge.
If you can’t support us as a Westcountry Rivers Champion by giving a living legacy, we would be delighted if you can help in other ways. This could be through smaller donations towards our annual running costs or our long-term investment fund. For 2024/25 our target for this is £350k – this will counter any annual gaps if we do not secure 10 Champions within any individual year.