GRASSROOTS groups and climate-conscious campaigners across the area are being urged to 'Rase' their game and accomplish lasting environmental change with a Rotary Club cash boost.

Today, in association with the Rasen Mail, the Rotary Club of Market Rasen is launching an initiative to encourage schools, groups, committees and individuals to step up to the mark and effect environmental enhancements in their neighbourhood.

The club's Environment Committee has £500 to give to the scheme it thinks is most deserving. The competition run through the Mail encourages people to come up with projects which make a difference.

Committee chairman Harold Bates said the prize was open to anyone in an area from Caistor to Wragby and the A15 to Binbrook, and all of the villages in between and the scope was wide open.
"We want to see people not only thinking about making their immediate environment in their street, school or neighbourhood better but actively doing something about it in a way that we can offer our support, not only with the whole or a share of the £500 but by rolling our sleeves up and getting involved," he said.

Ideas are to be put forward by October 1. Just to get you thinking, they might include schemes such as these:

* Efforts to audit the state of Market Rasen's scruffy streets and allocate clean-up projects to groups;

* The establishment of allotments, village orchards or community gardening programmes;

* Promotion and provision of environmental, energy-saving or efficiency initiatives;

* Car share programmes or other carbon footprint reduction measures;

* The sowing of wildlife meadows, lining streets with trees or the planting of hedges and woodland.
"We're very flexible but would prefer something that can be completed or set up by next June," said Mr Bates.
"It's all about people coming up with ideas that have a local environmental impact; after all, if all of us only do small things at a local level, that's all of us doing our bit for the global environment at large."

Club president Andrew Dalrymple said members were keen to get involved both financially and physically and felt their grant might suit organisations that need a final financial push to fulfil their aims.
"It would also be nice if the entries can demonstrate how the wider community can contribute to their success," he said.

The Rotary Club has previously planted bulbs at the town signs, supported the Station Adoption Group, given donations for solar panels at Claxby's Viking Centre, helped at the Gardeners Fair and continues to build and sell bat and owl boxes.

* Entries should be detailed in writing and submitted to the Rasen Mail at Waverley Court, Market Rasen, LN8 3EH, or emailed to jason.hippisley@jpress.co.uk before October 1 for judging in October.