Bathurst Community Climate Action Network

The wonderful news of a kitchen garden grant of $36,600 has just been has just been received. This was a joint submission from the School of Teacher (SOTE) Education at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, BCCAN and Rahamin and was an outcome of the Sustainability Conference hosted by SOTE at the end of October last year.
I have just finished uploading the news to the BCCAN web site, so perhaps this double entry is a bit redundant but is a link to this weeks blog about my dream.
The web team who make an effort to make this web site relevant to the issues around climate change and relevant to this community are trying very hard to increase this utility.
My particular dream is that it becomes a vital centre of conversation to the community in which it serves.
At present we have a series of emails for BCCAN members which circulate to those members. To my mind a lot of the issues raised in those email will have a lot of interest to members of the community who may not be members of BCCAN but may be visitors to the web site. Those who don't yet visit the web site, may do so it they were to find information, discussions there which ignited their interest and to which they might feel prompted to join at some time.
Let me paint a couple of scenarios.
I am interested in installing solar panels on my house, where do I start?
What we are hoping is that the hypothetical citizen my first opt to try BCCAN out and visit out Community Forum and see if anyone has posted a similar question before. (Currently there are forums based loosely on BCCAN's Action Planning Teams - Building, Energy, Food, Gardening, Water, Awareness) and in this case Energy would be an obvious first point of call.
If a similar question has been posted it you can click on that posting and read not only that posting, but all the subsequent replies to that question and in all that the answer to your question may be found.
If not - you may then post your own response to the original questioner or any of the replyees or may post your own question featuring those aspects not answered in the original "thread". ("Thread" indicates a question or topic and the whole series of responses it generates.
If this can be true for solar panels it can also be true for gardening ("What are the best tomato varieties to grow in Bathurst), water ("How can I recycle my grey water?") , awareness ("What are the pros and cons of the Government Emissions Trading Scheme and the oppositions counter to the climate change problem?"), building ("I have built a straw bale house and don't know whether to plaster with mud or cement - any ideas?") or food ("I am new to Bathurst and want to buy local food, where can I go?").
There are many different routes our hypothetical citizen may follow - go online and use any of many search engines to gradually narrow down that search and no doubt find many of the answers they were looking for, but the local search is often the best strategy as you may be able to be put in touch with someone locally who can give advice on local suppliers, installers and have local knowledge on getting the best out of your installation.
There are plenty of examples of web sites out there which service a particular community and which have enthusiastic participants going  by the number of  participants on their forums ( I was always taught "fora" was the plural of "forum" but "forums" seems more used these days).
Another reason the web team is trying to make the web site more user friendly and relevant is that we believe there are many people in this community who may not want to be involved in BCCAN itself or can't for a variety of reasons, but my like to visit the web site and make use of what it has to offer and may even become an enthusiastic participant on forums, may even like to contribute their own regular blog article on a particular aspect.  A keen gardener, with lots of local knowledge, a person building a sustainable house or living in one, are two examples which come to mind.
For some this might be  a big hurdle to approach. With this in mind the web team has produced a couple of guides to how you might get started in some of these activities - How to log onto the BCCAN web site, How to Join a Forum Discussion, How to post a Question on a Forum, How to Start  a Blog.
Of course all this will take time. A web sit is only useful if that web site has lots of content. A web site will only have lots of content if a community takes it on board and makes contributions.
We invite you all to join in and make a difference.
Note:  To start this off, the web team and friends have generated some starting questions and responses so there will be some content there for new visitors to the site.