Local Action

Glossary

Affiliated groups: These are groups which are doing practical conservation work and pay an annual fee to BTCV for a range of services offered through the group membership scheme. Sometimes referred to as 'groups who are members of BTCV'.
British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV): The UK's largest, practical conservation charity supporting people in action to protect and improve the environment. In Northern Ireland, BTCV is known as Conservation Volunteers Northern Ireland (CVNI), and in Wales it is known as Gwarchodwyr Cefn Gwlad.
Client: The person for whom conservation work is undertaken. This may be a landowner, the local authority, a school or institution, or perhaps the local wildlife trust or amenity society. Some groups refer to the client as the user-body.
Co-ordinator: Many people don't like being 'leaders'. Some would rather be called co-ordinators, chairmen or women, secretaries or even project leaders. To keep it simple, we refer to the group leader as the 'co-ordinator', the person responsible for keeping the group together and probably for setting up meetings.
Conservation group: A group which does practical conservation work.
County staff or field officers: People who are employed by BTCV at a local level.
Earth Summit: The largest ever meeting of world leaders which took place during the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
Environmental group: A group whose main aim is to promote 'greener living'. Their main areas of activity are likely to be the promotion of recycling, using less energy, protecting endangered species and other environmental issues. They may do some practical conservation work but not as their main activity. They may also have links with other organisations, such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace or WWF.
Management Plan: An action plan for work needing to be done on a site, which will usually take conservation and amenity issues into account.
Members: Those who are actively involved in or give their support to the group. They may or may not have paid to join.
Project: The work done by a group of volunteers on a site on one day or over several consecutive days. Some groups refer to projects as tasks.
Sustainable development: This term came into use following the 1992 Earth Summit. It is taken here to mean development, locally or nationally, that protects and improves the environment, while also improving people's quality of life.
Volunteer: An unpaid person who voluntarily gives up his or her time to do work which would otherwise not be done. Volunteers may be members of a local group as above, but many volunteers come on projects before actually joining a group.