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Clean Energy Nillumbik have invited you to attend to free online community events in October, 2020!

Healesville CoRE has been provided with information on 2 other interesting online community events coming up. The events are being run by Clean Energy Nillumbik, who although some distance away from Healesville, have extended their invitation to Healesville residents to join in their 2 free online events in October:

Speed Date a Sustainability Expert – Sunday 18 October 2:00pm – 4:30pm

Are you thinking about ways to make your home more sustainable? Here’s your chance for free, personalised advice from the experts in home sustainability. Ask about windows, sustainable building materials, building design, gardens, EVs, heating and cooling, solar, batteries, insulation, energy and water efficiency and more. Places are limited so see the list of experts and book your free, online, 20 minute appointments here (http://sdse.ata.org.au/sdse_event/nillumbik-2/)

Nillumbik Electric Vehicle Forum – Thursday 29 October 7:00pm – 8:30pm

The future is already here with electric vehicle sales growing and charging stations proliferating. Answer all your questions on range, charging and the smoothest of rides at the Nillumbik Electric Vehicle Forum. Hear from Australian Electric Vehicle Association expert, Bryce Gaton about all aspects of electric vehicles, their advantages and limitations, and how much fun they are to drive! Register here now. (https://www.cleanenergynillumbik.org.au/events-1/nillumbik-electric-vehicle-forum)

                             

 

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Download our Annual Report for the 2019 – 2020 financial year!

IMPORTANT VIEWING NOTE:

Our 2020 Annual Report is designed to be read in your PDF reader using “Two page view” and we recommend you change your settings to enable this.

Please follow this easy process when viewing our 2020 Annual Report on your computer:

1 – Click on the link below. It will likely open in a new tab or page in your browser and show you a preview.

2 – Select download icon, and save the file to your computer. Once file is downloaded, open it by double clicking on the file.

3 – The Annual Report should open using a PDF reader, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is free software you likely already have installed. If you do not have this, download Adobe Reader for free HERE, and continue these steps.

3 – Once the Annual Report 2020 has opened in your PDF reader (such as Adobe Acrobat), click on ‘View’ in the menu bar at the top, then click ‘Page Display’ from the drop down menu and ensure ‘2 Page View’ is selected. If you have a Mac, click on ‘View’, and select ‘2 pages’ from the menu that drops down if using the Preview software. See below for visual instructions.

Download our Annual Report for 2019 – 2020 financial year in PDF format HERE.

Here is a visual guide on how to change your PDF Reader software for 2 page viewing in Adobe Acrobat:

 

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Become a H’CoRE financial member for 2020-2021!

As a volunteer run organisation, Healesville CoRE depends on financial support from its membership base to continue operating. If you were a financial member in the 2019-2020 financial year, THANK YOU!!! We could not do the work we are doing without your loyalty and support.  The number of financial members we have listed assists us when we apply for grants, and membership fees you pay go toward the basic costs of running Healesville CoRE.

If you were a financial member last financial year, your membership expired on the 30th of June 2020, so it is now time to renew your membership for 2020-2021.

In case you missed the hype, Healesville CoRE ran an incentivised promotion for financial members who renewed their membership before the 30th of June.

It was a great success and featured 6 great prizes all donated by local businesses in Healesville, including a 6 pack of wines (from No.7 Healesville), 2 x boxes of mixed preserves (from Barney), and 3 jars of honey (from Amaranth Honey). A huge THANK YOU again to our generous prize donors!

Here is a list of the names we drew from the hat!

1ST PRIZE: (box wines): Lou Sbalchiero

2ND & 3RD PRIZE: (6-jar pack of preserves): Jon Sharpley & Vitor Cardoso

4TH, 5TH & 6TH PRIZES: (jar of honey): Bill Pickett, Lorraine Sorrell & Shayne Gleeson

Congrats to all the winners! If you’d like to become a financial member this financial year to go into the draw to win whatever prizes are available next year, become a financial member now!

RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP HERE!

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We have been wanting to set up this page for a long time now, but it is only with recent Victorian Government funding, through Sustainability Victoria, that we have been able to afford to pay for the technical work to be done to set up the login, the members’ page, and the automated update links to our list of current members in our CRM system. Renew your membership now and stay tuned for when the Healesville CoRE Members’ Only Page is launched.

RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP HERE!

Membership for individuals is only $25 for the year, and goes a long way to supporting our operations and activities as we work towards making Healesville a zero-carbon town!

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Healesville CoRE to Train Volunteers to Provide Free Home Energy Efficiency Audits for Interested Community Members!

We are very excited to announce that we applied to the Commonwealth Government for a grant to train volunteers to be able to offer free home energy efficiency audits for interested community members. The grant will pay for the training consultant and for provision of some technical equipment to enable a high quality audit to be conducted and a report to the home owner to be compiled. Stay tuned for when these home energy efficiency audits will be on offer once the training is completed. If you think you might be interested in finding out more about training as a volunteer home energy efficiency auditor, do get in touch with us at healesvillecore@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you.

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Yarra Ranges Council Feasibility Study on Building Solar Farms in Healesville and Surrounding areas.

Yarra Ranges Council has embarked on a feasibility study to see if it is viable to develop some solar farms on old tip sites in the municipality, including Healesville. Council is very keen to ascertain how much interest there is from community groups in being involved.

Leo De Jong, our Technical Projects Manager and Jeff Barlow, our President, are both speaking with the consultants about how Healesville CoRE and the Healesville community could be involved. This is a very exciting development, and although it is only a feasibility study, and not a project that is being implemented, it is a great start to beginning to think about how we can use larger scale projects like solar farms to achieve our Net Zero ambitions for Healesville by 2027!! Healesville CoRE is likely to be in touch with you later in the year to see what your views are on a number of issues related to community involvement, including possible community financial investment in a solar farm. We are hoping some tangible results will emerge from the feasibility study.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to use energy in our homes and businesses in Healesville, produced by solar panels from the old tip site!! Healesville CoRE commends the Yarra Ranges Council for this initiative.

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Healesville CoRE AGM on Sunday 25 August from 2.30 to 4.30pm!

It’s hard to believe another year has passed and we have our 2019 AGM coming up very soon. This year we have invited Dr Peter Cock, a former lecturer in Environmental Science at Monash University and founder of the Moora Moora Cooperative Community, to talk about Living with Renewable Energy for 40 Years.

Moora Moora was founded on Mt Toolebewong, in the hills just 20 minutes from Healesville, in the mid 1970’s, and fought actively not to connect to the electricity grid. They have used renewable energy over that period of time and now also have a working internal Micro Grid linking some of their homes. Peter will talk about the Moora Moora experience and his experience with renewable energy, from a time when it was not very popular in Australian to now, when the whole of Australia is in transition towards a renewable energy future.

Everyone is welcome to attend but only financial members of Healesville CoRE can vote at the AGM. If you would like to book a place at the AGM please contact us at this email address: healesvillecore@gmail.com

If you are a member of Healesville CoRE or would like to become a member and serve on our Central Committee or on one of our Sub Committees please get in touch. We would love to hear from you. Our three Sub Committees are Technical Projects, Community Engagement and Media. We really need the active involvement of our community and welcome new members to engage in our very exciting project to transition Healesville to Net Zero carbon from electricity consumption by 2017.

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Healesville CoRE Hits a Century in April!

We planned to have 100 financial members by the end of September this year but we reached that number at the end of April, five months early! This is a very exciting development that shows the real support from our community for the work we are doing. At the same time our data base has risen from just over 500 to 760! Who says small communities are not interested in community renewable energy? We could not do our work without this community support and we celebrate this fantastic growth over such a short time of just under 2 years! Well done Healesville!

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Finally, some Success with a Grant to Support our Work!

We are really excited to announce we have received $3,607.50 in funding from the Commonwealth Government to finance the training of 5 Healesville volunteers to learn how to conduct free Home Energy Efficiency Audits to help Healesville household reduce energy bills, with a focus on vulnerable households to begin with.

Glen Morris, who many of you know from his interesting and engaging workshops for Healesville CoRE, has been appointed the trainer and some volunteers have already expressed an interest. If you are interested in this one-day training please contact us at contact@healesvillecore.org.au for further information and we will be in touch! Watch this space!!

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Exciting Announcement about Two Successful Appointments for our President, Jeff Barlow!

Appointment to YREAC! Jeff is now in a position to expand the scope of our work as an organization with two recent successful appointments. He has been appointed to the Yarra Ranges Environment Advisory Committee (YREAC), which is a committee that meets every two months to advise YR Council on environmental issues. This is an individual appointment for Jeff, in his own right, rather than as a representative of Healesville CoRE, but the issue of community renewable energy will be a major point of interest for Jeff on this committee, amongst other important environmental issues.

This appointment, which is for three years, will enable the issue of climate change and community renewable energy to be considered more closely by the committee, with a view to, hopefully, our work being supported to expand beyond Healesville to other towns in the Yarra Ranges municipality. The first business meeting of the committee on Thursday 2 May at the Council Chambers in Lilydale, saw a vigorous and energized discussion on climate change and renewable energy. Jeff also provided the Committee with a recently published Blueprint for how Councils can be involved with their community in transitioning to Net Zero. If you would like to read this document click on this link:

http://z-net.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ZNET-A3-doublepager_v3.pdf

Appointment to the Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corps! Jeff will train for three days in Brisbane in June this year to become an Ambassador for Climate Change with a commitment to personally run a minimum of 10 events related to climate change, within one year.

Jeff will bring back to Healesville, and elsewhere, the skills he will gain in Brisbane, to further develop the work of Healesville CoRE, and to expand our work beyond Healesville with support from our Central Committee and our team of volunteers!

 

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