On Wednesday 24th July 2024, we hosted our third Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Holy Innocents Church in South Norwood – and it was the best one yet!
We had an amazing 22 people in attendance, with a mixture of members and non-members, regulars and first-timers. Equipped with food and drinks, our CEO, Connie, kicked off the welcome. She showed some photos of various activity since the last AGM in July 2023, and then covered the highlights, including:
- 46 active volunteers
- £50k of grants secured
- Attendance at 7 stalls
- 700+ hours logged by the Board
There were some challenges covered too, including some Board churn, capacity and working with the Council. Finally, she shouted out the two new Volunteer Managers (Tim and Megan), and celebrated the volunteers at CCE, including those who have won our new Volunteer of the Month awards!
The Chair, Damian, then moved us onto the Strategy and the goals that have been created as outputs from the Strategy Day back in May. These are:
- Deploy renewable energy to at least 10 sites by 2030
- Complete 4 community share offers by 2030
- We will establish a network of energy efficiency champions that will grow annually by 5 people
- CCE will deliver energy efficiency advice to 100 households by the end of 2025, and 500 by the end of 2027
- We will ensure all of our membership know the benefits of community energy for Croydon through a structured onboarding process
- CCE commits to directly employing 5 people by 2030
- CCE will use Croydon based businesses where possible and at least 25% of money spent will be with a Croydon based business by 2030
- We will meet with key councillors and our MPs at least twice a year
- We will become a trusted community energy provider in Croydon
The Projects Director, Murray, took us through an update for each of the four sites with whom we are to install community-financed solar (more details coming soon once the legal documents have been signed!).
He also covered off a recap of the community share offer model we intend to use to raise the capital costs for the projects, as seen below:
Our Fuel Poverty Director, Ria, then covered off how we’ve started to work on a plan for delivery Fuel Poverty support in the Borough, and also how the Sharing Spaces project is going. This has been funded by the Ashden Foundation, and is a weekly free community hub in New Addington. We are still offering £16.50/hour to lead a workshop! Apply here: https://forms.gle/Kuh1oG4qzXfycXt37
Previous workshops have included:
- Banner making
- Bug hotels
- Planting sunflower seeds
- Film screenings
- Clothes swap
- Mending clothes
Connie (covering for Aarushi) have a brief Marketing update, highlighting that we now have over 2,000 followers across our social media accounts and the big challenge in the coming year is to get our new share offer to as many people (online and offline) as possible!
Our Finance Director, Reysha, then led us through the “formal” part of the evening – the voting. Members voted to not have the accounts audited as per the Society’s rules, approved the accounts and also approved the new Directors onto the Board!
If you want to read more about the team, click here.
The evening ended with a look forward to the coming year, which we truly believe will be the most exciting year yet! Our solar projects are so close to getting off the ground, we will be applying for energy advice funding and we have an amazingly skilled Board of Directors.
To get in touch, get involved or anything else, just email hello@croydoncommunityenergy.co.uk 🙂
