Are you already helping out in your local green spaces, or perhaps you are just starting to think about getting involved?
Maybe you’re part of a Friends of group, organising litter picks, or planting up grey spaces.
Perhaps you lead walks, run gardening clubs, host photography or art workshops, or you’re a tree planter, an eco campaigner, or a parent to a little explorer.
Even if you’re simply the one who brings the tea and cake, you’re part of something big.
There are so many ways to get involved – and every single role matters.
Our Shared Goal
Together with the City of Nature Alliance of organisations, Birmingham City Council Parks Service is building a network of Green Champions across Birmingham.
We’re working to tackle the social, climate, and ecological crises by helping people reconnect with the natural world – right where they live.
With your help, we aim to:
- Support nature recovery at a local level
- Promote healthy outdoor activities
- Share ideas and success stories that improve access to green and blue spaces
- Encourage communities to explore, play, and celebrate the outdoors
Become a Green Champion in Birmingham.
Green Champions are local heroes who support the design, care and use of Birmingham’s public green and blue spaces – our parks, rivers, canals, and community gardens.
Your role could include:
- Connecting people to nature, and to each other
- Sharing information and personal experiences
- Inspiring others to explore, enjoy and protect green spaces
- Helping us create a cleaner, healthier, and wilder Birmingham
Your voice, your story, your actions – they all make a real difference to your neighbourhood, to our city and to you and your community.
What Is the Green Champion Programme?
The Green Champion Programme is all about creating opportunities for everyone in Birmingham to take part in delivering the city’s City of Nature Plan — helping to make Birmingham greener, healthier, and more connected to nature.
At its heart, the programme invites people to get involved in ways that feel right for them — from traditional volunteering to small, everyday actions that support nature and community wellbeing.
Who Is a Green Champion?
A Green Champion is anyone who chooses to do a little more than they have to, simply because they care.
We love this definition of volunteering:
“Doing more than you have to — because you want to — in a cause you consider good.”
That’s exactly what being a Green Champion is all about.
Some are traditional volunteers — joining Park Ranger activities or helping out in a Friends of Parks group. Others might be:
- A Public Health officer leading a lunchtime nature walk for colleagues
- A teacher running activities for Outdoor Classroom Day
- A community member planting trees or growing food in a shared garden
- Someone jogging and picking up litter (“plogging”) in their local park
Whether they’re paid professionals going the extra mile, weekend warriors, or casual visitors lending a hand — if you’re helping to deliver City of Nature actions, you’re a Green Champion.
A New Way to Volunteer
The Green Champion Programme celebrates all kinds of involvement, including:
- Traditional volunteering (Friends groups, action days, community projects)
- “Visiteering” – doing a small act of good while visiting green spaces
- Corporate and school projects improving outdoor environments
- Creative roles – from storytelling to social media and event support
- Everyday actions – picking up litter, planting pollinator-friendly plants, or inspiring others
If You’re Doing More Because You Care…
…then you’re already one of us.
Being a Green Champion is about choice, passion, and purpose — not job titles or hours logged. It’s about helping Birmingham grow into a City of Nature, in your own way, at your own pace.
Join the movement. Be a Green Champion.
Want to Join In?
Whether you’ve been involved for years or are just getting started, we’re here to support you. Together, we’ll grow a Greener Birmingham – one community, one idea, one action at a time.
You can register with Birmingham City Councils Park Service as a Green Champion just click here to complete the form: https://forms.office.com/e/Va1UFkAe4B A BCC Park Ranger will get in touch with you to find out more about how you want to be involved.
You can do as much or as little as you can. All we are asking is that you connect with us.
We will keep you updated and involved and help you connect with other Green Champions to share information and support you in your own community to look after green spaces. It is true that great oaks grow from tiny acorns, doing something small today can lead to great things in the future. So take root now and branch out more when you feel you can.
What will we do to support you as a Green Champion in your community?
We consulted with people who have been volunteering in green spaces for years to find out what we could do to support them in what they already do.
They said: “We love what we do but we could do so much more if only you [that’s BCC] would …”
- Help us do what we want to do
- Keep us involved and updated
- Help promote our activities
- Provide free training
- Help Bring people together
- Celebrate our achievements
So the Green Champion programme will also do that.
We already have fantastic organisations in Birmingham who support volunteering through groups and memberships and they are doing amazing work!
But we know there are people who want support to be more involved. Perhaps you want to be involved in other activities outside your group or learn new skills to help others in different ways like green social prescribing, social media, citizen science.
Or you have skills that can help other organisations or other groups that you want to share.
To make it easy to ask the questions you want to ask we have created a single point of contact for you to find out more you can contact us by emailing: Cityofnature@birmingham.gov.uk
Naturally Birmingham Future Parks Project 