Project no.1 HEREFORD (Environment).

Norman Sanier, who, at the age of 50, went back to his family's 30 acre orchard and brought it back from wilderness. Orchard farming is dying all over the world but Norman has brought his orchard back to life - and into the community. People buy 'crop shares' for £250 and get fruit, jams, juices year round - and can take part in all sorts of environmental and farming community activities all based around the ancient festivals of the seasons - e.g. May Day.

Project no. 2 OTTERY ST MARY (Environment)

RIO -Recycling in Ottery St Mary. Tiny story of five people who re-trained a village. Nice because of the title!

Project no. 3 LONDON (Preventable disease)

This posting is from Henrietta Spink who has founded the Henry Spink Foundation to help children with special needs to have access to complementary medicine. The foundation has just launched a poster campaign - so look out for it

Henrietta has two children: Freddie and Henry. She writes:

My children were the first proven case of damage in utero from the mercury in my fillings. Professor Ramachandran [Channel 4 ''Phantoms of the Brain] has just taken Henry on to see if he can find the final missing link to allow him to function.

We have just had a major poster campaign across London to advertise our service. Our website last month had 25,000 hits. 50% of our calls come from the USA. The rest in the UK.

My other hat is that of campaigning for equal rights for special needs children.

Suffice it to say that one of the major changes that I wish to alter before the new code of practice for special education needs [or not so special] is brought out early next year, is that of 'enforcement' of the code. Parents are blackmailed into going to tribunal to gain the most basic provision for their children. With in the Tribunal system perjury is legal and no costs can be awarded yet it is a statutory court of law!

I want the gift of my children not to have been wasted!!

Hope its of interest?

Henrietta

Project no.4 LONDON (Environment).

Barnet Council in North London has launched a pilot campaign called 'Streetwise Barnet' with a new 'Town Keeper' to clean up the borough's streets. At the moment the Town Keeper will just work in East Barnet Village - but he or she will patrol the area first thing each morning to discover what needs to be done over litter, graffiti, fly-posting, damage to roads and pavements and general maintenance. They'll carry special cleaning equipment and mobile phones to call other workers in if the job is too big for them.This should mean that by the time people wake up and notice that something is wrong outside - it will already be being sorted. Golders Green and West Hendon boroughs are also going to try the pilot scheme.

Project no.1 LONDON - WORLDWIDE (Environment).

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) gave the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) the prestigious Global 500 Roll of Honour for outstanding contributions to the protection of the environment in June 2001.

EIA was established in 1984 to investigate and campaign against the illegal trade in wildlife and the destruction of the natural environment. They are based in the UK and USA and have pioneered the use of undercover investigative techniques to expose international environmental crime. EIA's work focuses on the world-wide trade in ozone depleting substances, the global trade in threatened species, and the illegal logging and trade in timber, and has directly effected changes in international environmental laws and government policies.

Some of EIA's past successes include the exposure of a thriving and sophisticated black market in ozone depleting substances across Europe, which led to EU regulation banning both the sales and the use of halons, and a two year investigation into the billion dollar illegal ivory trade which led to a world-wide ban on this international illicit trade.

Recently, EIA's investigations into the biggest cetacean hunt in the world (the Dall's porpoise hunt in Japan) resulted in the International Whaling Commission passing a resolution calling on Japan to lower the number of porpoises killed, and repeated documentation of massive illegal logging in the national parks of Indonesia, home to the endangered orang-utan, has prompted the Government of Indonesia to enact a domestic and international ban on ramin, a key threatened tree species.