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Maidwell-being

CA-WN Exchange

• 2 min read
Maidwell-being
The colour-coded bins introduced by Maidwell-being for recycling toothbrushes, personal care items, blister packs, contact lenses, and pens.

Fiona Howes, resident of Maidwell and member of Maidwell-being, tells us about the group and their activities.

Maidwell-being is about finding ways to help each other within our community, share skills, improve our environment, save money and build friendships. Although started by a small group, we are hoping that as many people as possible in Maidwell will become involved with whichever aspects interest them and carry ideas forward.

Our first initiative was to renovate the village bus shelter to use as a book and jigsaw puzzle exchange, helping with sustainability. We have also provided some community recycling bins for items that shouldn’t go in household waste or recycling bins (e.g. batteries, light bulbs, blister packets, contact lenses packets, crisp packets, toothbrushes, etc).

Since January 2024 we have been running drop-in sessions at the village hall on the second Saturday of each month. The first event had:

  • A tech support team
  • A repair station
  • Sewing and crafting advice
  • A solar panel expert
  • Rita the Refill Roadster – the mobile van from Market Harborough’s Refill Revolution, the zero-waste shop
  • A Wombling sign-up station (for litterpicking)
  • Representatives from West Northamptonshire Council
  • Lots of coffee and cakes!

The tech support team and Rita the Refill Roadster now attend all drop-in sessions and each month we try to include a new activity (making pine cone bird feeders, learning to crochet, plant/seed swaps).

To raise environmental awareness, Sustainable West Northants (https://www.westnorthants.gov.uk/sustainable-west-northants) came to our April meeting with their “How bad are bananas” carbon footprint game (bananasgame.co.uk for more information) and Climate Action-West Northamptonshire came to our June meeting, the discussion providing us with some great ideas about our environment and bio-diversity.

Spin-off events have included a Connecting Families event run jointly by Northants ACRE and Northamptonshire Adult Learning who advised on digital skills and provided Morsbags (https://morsbags.com/) filled with goodies to help keep us warm and toasty. More digital know-how workshops have taken place, looking at using Zoom/FaceTime, online/mobile banking, online shopping, accessing the NHS/Post Office online and prevention against scamming.

Future initiatives will include setting up a services directory to go on the village website providing details of recommended, reliable service providers (electricians, boiler servicing, builders, decorators, tilers, chimney sweeps, carpenters, etc) agreeing areas around the village that can help promote bio-diversity and (hopefully!) setting up ‘Repair Shop’ sessions and equipment/skills swaps.