Ecojam

How can Ecojam.org assist you and your community group?

Ecojam’s mission
Ecojam is a website dedicated to raising the profile of local green businesses, organisations and initiatives and connecting them with each other and the people of the Avon region. We aim to engage the wider public in making this region sustainable, help them adopt more sustainable lifestyles, and stimulate green businesses.

Ecojam’s background
Ecojam was born out of the Sustainability Cafes’ organised by the Bristol Sustainability Network and is kindly supported by the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council.

Benefits of Ecojam to your group

• Promote behaviour change by reaching a wider audience with your campaigns and activities
• Raise awareness of your events
• Recruit volunteers
• A package of free services and a high profile marketing campaign will draw people to Ecojam and therefore your group
• Ecojam is a free tool for communicating to the public
• New comers to the city will use Ecojam to find your group
• Learn from the experiences and case-studies of other community groups
• Share your best-practice to lead to a wider impact than your efforts alone can achieve
• Find information sources to help you with your work
• Find sources of funding

What Ecojam features will your group find useful?

List your group on the directory
In the “Act Bristol” section of the Directory, there is a category for community groups. We hope to list all the community groups campaigning and taking action in response to climate change and other environmental and social issues. This will allow other groups, and interested organisations and members of the public to find out about you and to get in touch.

Ecojam offers four directory packages, ranging from a basic package to the OAK. Each higher package offers greater exposure to visitors of Ecojam and more features. Your community group is entitled to the top package, the OAK, for FREE (businesses pay £69). This package allows you to list:

• Best practice campaigns and actions
• Funding sources
• Workshop facilitation techniques
• How to establish a group’s constitution
• Anything else that other groups may find useful

This will avoid duplicating efforts and help new groups to start-up.

Bristol Sustainability Network Discussion group
Make use of the Bristol Sustainability Network discussion group to communicate to one-another, ask questions, and keep each other up-to-date on progress and aware of useful resources. Alternatively, we can establish a discussion group specifically for community groups – please get in touch in you feel this would be useful.

Write a blog
You can create a blog for your group. You may want to tell others of a success story or the campaign strategy you are employing. The latest blog entry appears on the Interact news page (see www.ecojam.org/interact), enabling you to raise awareness of your activities. Major news stories will be included in the green news section and communicated to local media.

Post your events
If you are holding events, publicise them in the events section (see www.ecojam.org/interact/events). They will then be advertised in boxes in other parts of Ecojam.

Advertise volunteer opportunities
Recruit volunteers (see www.ecojam.org/jobs)

Tune into green news
Ecojam will become the most comprehensive source of green news in Bristol. Stay up-to-date on what is going on in the city and also nationally and globally (www.ecojam.org/interact). Contribute your news stories by sending them to admin@ecojam.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Skills share
Offer your skills and expertise to others on Free Stuff (see www.ecojam.org/free-stuff) and find people to help you.

Email updates (coming soon)
An email system is being installed allowing you to select and receive email alerts of new discussion comments, news, events and anything else. There will also be an e-newsletter allowing you to communicate to a large number of people and stay up-to-date on what others are doing.

How to…?

If you would like to make use of Ecojam to support your group, below are a few things you can do straight away.

Become a member
To add anything to Ecojam you need to be a member. Go to http://www.ecojam.org/join_form

Write your profile
So people can put a name to a face and know a little about you, we recommend updating your profile. Once you are logged in:

1. Click your name at the very top right of the display.
2. Click profile
3. Click edit profile
4. Write a short biography and upload your photo.

Create an OAK listing for your group

1. Go to http://www.ecojam.org/directory/add-your-organisation-to-the-directory
2. Click “Add Oak listing” on the right.
3. Fill in your details, including contact details, description of your group, relevant images etc
4. Select “Act Bristol – Community groups” under “Directory categories“
5. Select “Community group” under “Organisation type” (to avoid paying the fee)

Contribute information pages
Use the same process as above. Make sure you select “community group” again. If it isn’t relevant to include an address, leave it blank but fill in your contact name and email, which won’t be publicly displayed.

Write a blog
If you would like to write a blog, please email admin@ecojam.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for it to be set-up for you.

Discussion group
Contribute to the discussion group. Go to http://www.ecojam.org/interact/discussion/latest

Advertise volunteer opportunities
Go to www.ecojam.org/jobs/

Contact information:

Email: admin@ecojam.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Ecojam, Department of Earth Sciences,
University of Bristol
Wills Memorial Building
Queens Road
Bristol. BS8 1RJ

Related reading:

Download the Outcomes and recommendations of Ecojam ‘boree PDF >