THAMES21 LIMITED
Thames21 - Thames21 is an environmental charity involving, educating and engaging people in practical volunteering activities to care for rivers, streams and ponds across Greater London. The charity builds constructive and sustainable relationships between urban communities and the water environments in their neighbourhood. Urban waterways are not just vital sanctuaries for nature but can also have a huge impact on a community’s quality of life. Their strong appeal across the generations and cultures can be used to bring communities together. Once connected to the river, community interests often develop into a wide range of further activities, such as wildlife habitat creation, riverside planting, and art and education programmes. This can take the form of habitat restoration, including: constructing improvements to river banks, planting aquatic plants on these improvements to benefit fish and macro-invertebrates, and building dead-hedges to benefit nesting birds, to name but a few. Initially established as a research project in 1994, Thames21 became an independent registered charity in 2004. Thames21’s Board of Trustees also includes representatives from Thames Water, the Environment Agency and the Port of London Authority. It continued to expand and develop projects and programmes and today has over 20,000 volunteers on waterways across London. Thames21 seeks to inspire, motivate and deliver not only immediate, but long-term improvement to waterways, engaging the community through practical participation and by engendering local sense of ownership and responsibility for waterway areas which will then link into opportunities for ongoing stewardship.
