International Women's Day 2023
To mark this year's #IWD, we've created a set of bookmarks with ecofeminist reading recommendations and awareness-raising facts about women, climate, and biodiversity. They're free to download and ready to print! Add a handmade heart and give them away at your local bookshop or library - any day of the year. Thank you so much Mabel Studio for the beautiful design work.
Christmas project
We throw away 114,000 tonnes of plastic waste in the UK every year at Christmas! To tackle this shocking statistic, we've decided to write a letter, add a hand-made heart, and send to manufacturers of advent calendars. Why them? They now individually wrap every single chocolate or sweet in the calendar, adding yet more to the plastic problem. To join in, download the letter (editable to adapt to your local context), make a heart, and send them off - it's that simple! More details on our Facebook page.
A new recycling scheme
A local group in Quito, Ecuador, made enough hearts for their entire local residents group! They wanted to enhance awareness of and engagement with local recycling schemes, so hand-delivered each heart and letter in September 2022. They've noticed a real increase in recycling in the local area since then.
Public transport Summer 2022
We left hearts and postcards on trains, buses, bike racks, any form of active or public transport, to raise awareness of the links between travel patterns, the environment, and women. Download templates here or contact us if you'd like to do the same where you live!
Postcard template is editable to your own context. Then print as "full page slides" double sided and cut into four postcards.
June 2022 MPs briefing
In June, UK MPs were briefed on the climate and ecological emergency. Our UK members wrote to their MPs and asked them to prioritise attendance at the briefing. Of course, we enclosed information on how the emergency disproportionately impacts women, and sent our MP one of our hand-crocheted hearts. The briefing came about thanks to Angus Rose, an activist who spent more than an month on hunger strike earlier this year. Follow the links to hear more from Angus, and to find our template letter, adapted from his own.
Find us on Facebook to join our zoom crochet group and work on this together!
#BigPlasticCount May 2022
In May 2022 we supported the Big Plastic Count, adding a twist of our own. We counted all the plastic we threw away or recycled for a week. Then, we made our crocheted hearts and gave them to the shops where we bought all the plastic, along with a letter sharing our concerns about the impacts of plastics on women's health, and asking them to push for better packaging choices.
Plastic pollution and women's health
In April 2022 we worked on a letter-writing project collaborating between members in the UK and Turkey, to send hearts to decision-makers in the plastic waste process.
International Women's Day 2022
This is the IWD procession in Derby, UK. We went along to walk in solidarity and we gave out hearts with cards to raise awareness of the impact of environmental damage on women and girls.