This project has been fascinating to take part in and also quietly confident in our local burn water quality too! We need to update the results on our Facebook page to share the good news. As yet we haven't spent the funding but that's in large part due to changes going on in the park by the council. However it would be good to get some grafitti removal actioned that are on a variety of bins. This would illustrate that the park is well looked after. I'd like to include our scouts into the water testing if i can get time to initiate.

Since receiving the kit and training i have completed 4 tests encompassing August to December 2023. As we are a very small voluntary group it falls to me to action the testing and this has been quite challenging this year with work demands, ill health etc. One way to improve upon this is to perhaps nominate our local scout group in the New Year. Never the less observing the burn water in close detail this year has been fascinating and we hope to continue monitoring it's progres as much as possible.

Timeline: When will you be able to start your project? How often will your team meet? Are there any key dates to share for the project? We can start as soon as we have the equipment. Our group meet on the first Sunday of every month anyway so we would do that during a normal monthly session or, we could add another day if we needed more time. Although it seems simple and straight forward enough I think. However there are only a couple of us who are tech-savvy enough to upload the results to the app but that's ok we can work round that!

Budget: You don't need to share exact prices, but please share how you're planning to spend the seed funding & what costs you're anticipating to get your project up and running: Our costs will be kept to equipment only. All of our members are volunteers. No one takes a salary at all so it's our time that's precious!

Impact: How will your community benefit from this project? Do you have any measurable goals for your project, such as the number of people that will participate? Are you hoping to spread knowledge or increase interest in a specific subject? Initially I would prefer if it could be our group that start testing the water - after a couple of occasions we can then invite either schools, the scouts etc. A large secondary school are frequent users of the park as a through-way for lunchtimes and so building a link via water testing in their local park might help reduce the littering problem too. I think most children based organisations would be delighted to help in measuring the water quality locally!

Location: If your project requires physical space, have you decided the location? Do you have all necessary permission and permits to carry out your project at the chosen location? Yes we work very closely with EDC (about 6 years now I think) and Jackie Gillespie who alerted me to Change X in the first place, would be supportive of our group and linked groups testing the burn water in our park, on a regular basis.

Our small and dedicated group meet every month anyway, so incorporating additional mini-projects such as testing the burn water, will be a straight forward task for any one of us to complete. Any new members always welcome!

Action plan:

Timeline: When will you be able to start your project? How often will your team meet? Are there any key dates to share for the project?

Budget: You don't need to share exact prices, but please share how you're planning to spend the seed funding & what costs you're anticipating to get your project up and running:

Impact: How will your community benefit from this project? Do you have any measurable goals for your project, such as the number of people that will participate? Are you hoping to spread knowledge or increase interest in a specific subject?

Location: If your project requires physical space, have you decided the location? Do you have all necessary permission and permits to carry out your project at the chosen location?