OASIS MEDia

A team of executives with communications, project and business management skills joined FREdome volunteers to research and source partners for a joint bid for funding for stimulating community tree planting projects in water-scarce areas of the East of England and Southern Spain (Mediterranean Basin).

Our partners in this 1 million Euro bid to join the 2012 round of LIFE + environmental communications projects have included:

• Liverpool John Moores University Department of Psychology and the Environment
• The University of Seville Department of Agro Science
• The City of Santa Pola Economic Development team
• Cranfield Department of soil technology (as expert subcontractor)
• Executive Forum Alumni of St Albans (source of executive volunteers)

A principal challenge we face is the very structure of governments and funding programmes. These are separated out into functions dealing with, for example, economy, employment, food, water, energy, forestry, soil, climate, biodiversity and international development – whereas these functions are in reality closely interlinked and interdependent. An application for assistance with an all-encompassing solution tends to rejected on the grounds that the majority of the overall benefits lie outside the scope of any one of these departments or programmes.