Freerotation is proud to be a Partner of Cardiff-based charity, Size of Wales.
You can visit the Size of Wales website here: http://sizeofwales.org.uk/
The charity protects an area of tropical forest twice the size of Wales.
We support Size of Wales by raising money through the sale of eco-friendly t-shirts from our Teemill shop (£5 donated per garment sold), through donations at the festival, and by raising awareness of their important work.
News Update:
Last year, Freerotation Artist, Aboutface (Ben Kelley), completed an ambitious and profound inter-cultural collaboration with the indigenous Wampis community in Peru. His project included a journey to Peru in June 2018 where he spent time and connected personally with the community. This was in direct co-operation with our partner charity, Size of Wales which supports the Wampis as part of their ongoing work to protect an area of rainforest twice the size of Wales. The project explores the evocative aural terrain of the rainforest and the sacred female songs of the Wampis, and is helping to raise awareness of the urgent threats to the Wampis’ forest home. Ben also working raised money through the donation of his artist fee and record sales, and through a crowdfunding project which he set up in support of the Wampi community during the autumn of 2018.
Ben has written a beautiful and touching piece about his experience with the Wampi community with beautiful photographic pieces, which you can read here.
Size of Wales
Each year, an area of rainforest equivalent to 6 times the size of Wales (13 million hectares), is destroyed. Tropical forests absorb and retain 1/5 of all man-made CO2 emissions. Any destruction of their carbon cleansing powers is extremely damaging. Destroying trees through clearing and burning, releases huge amounts of CO2 which ultimately affects our global climate.
Our solution is to encourage our nation to take action by supporting communities in Africa and South America to preserve areas of threatened tropical forests equivalent to the size of Wales. Indigenous people are vital stewards of global rainforests and working closely with them is at the heart of what we do. Communities rely on their forests for livelihoods and protection and are by far the most motivated and knowledgeable people to conserve them.
Working in partnership with local partners, Size of Wales helps the forest communities to:
● Protect their forests by improving their forest management and agricultural techniques
● Make a better living from agro-forestry products
● Plant shade trees to better protect coffee crops
● Establish tree nurseries run by local people, ensuring that re-forestation is affordable, achievable, sustainable and the source of livelihoods. This ultimately reduces poverty in these communities.
● Preserve national parks and therefore wildlife, which in turn helps combat unauthorized logging
We also run an education programme across Wales where we seek to educate children about the importance of tropical forests and inspire them to make a difference.
What difference will we make if we continue our work?
Since 2013, we have delivered £490,000 in funding, supported 20 tropical forest preservation and tree planting projects in Africa and South America. The result is that we have helped to protect a total area of 2.3million hectares….the equivalent to the size of Wales.
There is so much more to do. The challenges of increasing global carbon emissions and ongoing deforestation remain serious. Our future work will be even more important and demanding.
We want to expand our contribution to the global effort to protect the world’s remaining rainforests with an even greater impact in the future. In fact, we want to double our efforts to achieve forest protection for an area twice the size of Wales
We also want to continue educating future generations so that they understand how they can impact the lives of people around the world.