News from FREdome Visionary Trust!

Heres a catch up on what the team has been up to recently.

Great response to the FREdome Visionary Trust in Paris

FREdome founder Greg Peacheys January 2008 visit to the Meridian Hotel Paris, where he pitched the FREdome concept to the Best Western Hotel chain, was met with an enthusiastic response. Twenty franchisees came forward to express interest in rolling out the model in their own areas of the UK, using a local Best Western Hotel as a base for people to hold community events and workshops for idea generation with a local website in support . Greg has since contacted each of the hoteliers individually to establish a dialogue.

FREdome lottery bid for national funding

This success gave FREdome the impetus it needed to aim for further funding from the Lottery to cover the administrative costs of the next stage in England. The application for £442,000 was accepted as a good contender for funding a decision which will take up to four months from the submission of a more detailed application. Greg is confident, Crucially , we can show the measured benefits of the FREdome model and a proven track record of success in creating tangible results from previous grants, he said.

Local food project news

The success of the first selected FREdome Community Project gathers momentum as the bold scientific and social aims of the C-Green Solutions local food/C02 reduction experiment continues to attract more interest and support from near and far. Here is a run down on the latest:

Fingers Crossed for the Big Green Funding opportunity

On June 10^th Greg and a fantastic bid team submitted an application for the Big Green Challenge a £1m prize fund set up by NESTA for carbon-reducing community projects in the UK. The C-Green Solutions/FREdome Project was selected to go forward to a semi-final 100 contestants from among 350 projects. As part of the bid, the plans for C-Green Solutions are being reviewed by experts at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory. Other interesting and exciting funding opportunities are being identified as the combined oil crisis and food shortages Greg warned us of finally hit and national agencies are looking to fund more sustainable solutions to costly imported and transported food.

Help!

Around one acre of waste/agricultural land is sought for a mid-scale demonstration of the algal growth. Can you help? Post your comment on the blog or email greg@fredome.org in confidence.

Small-scale experiment
This summer holiday a small team of students from St Michaels Catholic High School & Specialist Humanities College undertook supervised paid work experience for up to 8 weeks at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden. The purpose was to prove under scientific rigour:

1. Whether growing vegetables in sea nutrients improves nutritional quality, flavour and yield

2. If growing micro-algae in dilute sea water improves the rate of multiplication

Micro scale test
Despite recent ill health, 77 year old founder Harry Hart has been encouraged to work on the project with renewed enthusiasm and is thriving on the vegetables he is growing in just dilute sea-water.

3500 young people support FREdome online!

The FREdome Youth team, incorporating the C-Green Solutions team at St Michaels is using social networking on Bebo and MySpace to spread the word about FREdome and the C-Green project. Since early January a jaw-dropping 3500 friends have joined the group WE CARE set up by FREdome Youth Representatives Jasmine, Sophie and Beatrice.

The girls are screening the applicants most of whom are between 14 and 16 years of age. says Greg. We cant publicise the site to adults, but any young people can contact me if they want to find out how to join. Contact Greg.

A number of spin-off groups have been created, but most remarkable to tell is the success the young people have had with their fund raising parties at Area Night Club. So far Jasmine and Sophie have organised three fantastic parties for under 18s. The launch in March was supported by indie rockers Mars Patrol who played for free and support FREdome on their website.

http://www.myspace.com/themarspatrol

The UV night Party Night - took place in May and combined the events raised £8000. The July Beach Party was also a great succcess. The next is planned for Wednesday 29^th October 2008 and there will be ticket pre-sales online at www.myspace.com/fredome_yea and live broadcast promotion on Fresh FM.

FREdome is grateful to all event sponsors, volunteers and supporters from the local business community with special thanks to Area nightclub and the Herts Constabulary although no incidents were reported. National Youth Representative Beatrice, 15, provides this report. (Picture by Dave Long)

Young people want enjoy the future as well as the present

On the 28th of May, 2008, 770 under-eighteens poured into Area Nightclub, Watford in order to join in with the UV-themed party run by the FREdome Visionary Trust.

The Party was organised by the youth section FREdome-YEA (Youth Encouraging Adults.)

From FREdome-YEA comes WeCare, an account created on the social networking site, MySpace, where over 3500 youngsters have added WeCare as a friend.

WeCare publicised the event through MySpace bulletins, messages and comments, as well as displaying leaflets and posters in numerous shops.

The party went without a hitch. DJ Simon King commented, the crowd is one of the best Ive had.

A whole variety of music was played with great bass tunes to really get the party-goers dancing.

These icons represent the three basic components of a potential solution to the global threats to young peoples future:

* climate change

* the energy crisis

* starvation and disease.

These young people are drawing attention to the possibility that we could rapidly re-fertilise deserts and wastelands (75% of the worlds land) using algae, and grow all the food and fuel that the world needs, stabilising the world economy and absorbing excess CO2 in the process.

Altogether the party was a great success, raising over £6500, as well as generating great support and awareness for FREdomes vision.

FREdome-YEA, youth encouraging adults.

Visit www.myspace.com/fredome_yea for further information.

Opening times: Office Hours
Address: 43A Napsbury Lane
St Albans
Hertfordshire
AL1 1DU
Telephone: 0845 225 3005
Email: greg@fredome.org
Website: www.fredome.org