1. Community – Your Planning and Involvement.
Connections need to be forged and maintained between our volunteers and the local community, businesses, schools, groups, and support organisations, to leverage each other's abilities and achieve common goals.
Competition Guide Notes:
Marks are awarded for the overall quality of the Entry Form, town/village map and appropriateness of backup material submitted with your entry. Other key issues are the participation of the local community, businesses, schools and youth in general; working partnerships with local civic agencies; works carried out and appropriate projects completed; existence of an achievable updated TidyTowns Plan. Consideration will be given to social inclusion, whole of community approach, the role of volunteers and new residents in activities.
2022-23 Summary
(N) Website
www.JohnstownTidyTowns.ie launched shortly after our 2022 competition entry it hosts a record of all that we have achieved with our plans and aspirations for the environment and community.
Our small team maintains the site and particularly useful for keeping a record of our work in date order has been the snapshot news page.
(M) Facebook
Our Facebook page gains the most local attention and is largely shared through the Community Group (3,500 members) which explains why our follower numbers doesn't increase greatly.
Statistics 1 June 2022 to 10 May 2023 (12 mths previous)
1,363 Followers, an increase of 41
62 (92) Posts Reached 23,961 (25,827)
963 (919) Page Visits
(M&P) Sunflower Trail
Introducing ourselves to our whole community and engaging people in planning, nurturing, and celebrating biodiversity and the environment.
Our 2022 display engaged several classes from of our 4 schools, several local businesses, Meath County Council departments of Environment, Transport and Maintenance, and Heritage, Navan IDA and 5 businesses, and 3 local sporting clubs to host nearly 50 displays and over 600 sunflowers.
For 2023 more than 50 sites have been suggested, and we are germinating 1400 sunflowers. We've taken the opportunity to change the trail route to include the newly opened Milbrook to Johnstown Wood pedestrian link together with alternative paths.
We've greatly increased the scale of the potential display by continuing with our existing school growing teams and asking local volunteers from several residential estate groups to germinate an extra 500 seeds with the aim of them asking their neighbouring residents to grow these sunflowers in their front gardens and fill in the gaps between display sites.
Annual Growth
Over the past 3 years, the trail has increased in scale as we draw in more members from the community to help participate.
2021 Trail
2022 Trail
Proposed 2023 Trail
(N) Riverside Cleaned
Organised by our local Wild About Navan, April 1st, we participated with 50 others to clean dozens of litter bags in the 1st Big Boyne Clean Up at the Ramparts, Navan. In a future visit we aim to include our local Athlumney Riverside.
(N) 'Don't Mow Yet'
In 2022 Meath County Council allowed certain verges and roundabouts to grow the grass longer than usual to allow wildflowers to appear and to provide a better habitat for biodiversity. In March we met to discuss and endorse that 2km of Metges Road be included. A flurry of dandelions resulted within weeks and we helped improve the presentation by clearing the cycle path unwanted weeds and edged some of the verges.
(M) 'No Mow May'
For the 2nd year running, and in collaboration with Wild About Navan, we endorsed putting away lawnmowers for the month of May.
A number of large estate lawns have not been fully cut and we will monitor to see how long they go and whether they achieve the full month.
(M) Late First Lawn Cut
Delaying the first lawn cut of the year isn't easy when Easter keeps moving around and when many decide to revisit their gardens and children want to play outside. Several estate lawns did however benefit and the display of dandelions turned Johnstown yellow.
(N) Dalgan Park Biodiversity
Three members were invited to attend a private pilot program for a biodiversity tour of Dalgan Park hosted by members of Wild About Navan. We gained a new insight into the native mosses, lichen, wildflowers, trees, animals, and birds by following the trail that will be familiar to many.
(N) Winning Seminar
Hosted by MCC at the Trim Castle Hotel TrimTidy Towns, winners in 2022, presented a seminar and tour of their 'Tidier Town'.
(N) Community Fund
We’re included in the current round of the Tesco Ireland Community Fund in Navan.
(M) Food Poverty
We continue to support families experiencing food poverty. We have been hindered by the loss of the ICHH Registered Charity umbrella and we are still not therefore able to ask the public for donations. Core Ireland, who are registered, have been of great assistance but this service may be outside their remit. Athboy People Who Care Share group are still going through the process to become registered.
(N) Navan's Heritage
In Feb 2022 we teamed up with members from Wild About Navan to collaborate in a 5-week Heritage Keepers workshop hosted by The Heritage Council and Burrenbeo Trust.
Our project will be to host an event in the Solstice Theatre, June 24th, that brings together key speakers and members of the public who are interested in networking, participating in local projects, and attending future lectures & workshops.
(N) Creating A Biodiversity Action Plan
We're delighted to receive a €5,000 grant to create a Community Biodiversity Action Plan for Johnstown from The Community Foundation For Ireland. This grant will enable us to gain feedback from qualified ecologists to identify what biodiversity Johnstown currently has and the actions that we can undertake to support wildlife within our neighbourhood.
(N) Sleepout Fundraiser
We would like to say a big thank you to Loreto Secondary School, St. Michael's, Navan Transition year students who raised over €1,600 through their sleepout event in support of our Navan's homeless.
We now have the support and backing of Core Ireland which will mean we are able to provide an improved outreach service to the most vulnerable people in our county.
(M) Christmas Hampers
Our annual Christmas delivery to families in food poverty within Navan saw 40 hampers distributed by volunteers.
A special thank you to the regular weekly delivery volunteers who donated their year's worth of petrol expenses to purchase extra supplies.
(M) Christmas Shoebox
Due to the closure last year of the ICHH charity we've been unable to advertise and collect donations from the public. We were delighted when Beaufort Secondary School made their own collection and asked us to help distribute them.
(M) Our Volunteer of the Year
We are delighted to announce the winner of our Johnstown Tidy Towns 'Volunteer of the Year Award 2022' sponsored by Smiths SuperValu is Alan Lawes.
Alan's continuous commitment and drive in leading our ‘People Projects’ including Navan Outreach, Food Hampers, Christmas Shoeboxes, Clothing Collections, Easter Eggs, Back to School Packs, involvement in the Ukraine Appeal, and also making the time to provide hands-on support with all the environmental projects is remarkable.
Congratulations Alan on your well-deserved award.
Johnstown Tidy Towns Committee.
(M) AGM
Hosted at O'Briens it will be 12 Month's since our last Zoom AGM this will be our first in-person gathering since 2018.
(M) Pride of Place Awards
We offer our congratulations to all the award winners at MCC Pride of Place 2022 for the Navan Municipal District.
We picked up 2 awards for Large Town and Actions for Pollinators whilst Old Johnstown Village Community Group won 3 awards: Streetscape, Small Town 500-2000, and Heritage Award.
