All Hands On The Don
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About the project
The Don Catchment Rivers Trust is delivering the All Hands On The Don project. This project is all about connecting people with the natural, historic, and cultural heritage of the River Don between Mexborough and Thorne. It is a National Lottery Heritage Fund project.
All Hands On The Don is delivering volunteering, events, work placements, access improvements, and habitat improvements.
These are looking to:
- Increase health and wellbeing, skills, and employability
- Foster community action, inclusion, and community cohesion
- Improve access to the river, celebrate river heritage, and foster understanding of the river and river issues
The project area:
Ways to get involved
Gain experience in practical conservation, citizen science, assisting events, and educational visits for schools as a volunteer for the All Hands on the Don project. Request a personalised event from us, such as a school session, an environmental discussion group, walks, talks, and more! Receive updates from us via our mailing lists and social media.
Sign up as a volunteer
Click on the titles to find out more information.
Catchment Volunteer
Working alongside DCRT staff you will help to improve the River through practical work. This can involve clean-up days to make the river a more pleasant place to be, improving access to the Don, invasive plant species removal and even habitat improvement work! Full catchment volunteer role description here.
Citizen Science Volunteer
Working alongside DCRT staff you will help to survey the ecology in and around the River. This can involve surveys for plants, insects and animals and even kick sampling! Full citizen science role description here.
Volunteer Events Assistant
Working alongside DCRT staff you will help to run events to help promote the rivers in our catchment, the work the trust undertakes and the All Hands on the Don project! Full events assistant role description here.
Volunteer Education Assistant
Working alongside DCRT staff you will help to help run educational sessions for school and youth groups so that they can learn about their local river and the creatures that live in it. This can involve working with young people to go bug hunting, pond dipping, run classroom activities and helping to set up and pack away DCRT’s equipment! Full education assistant role description here.
Request a personalised event
Click on the titles to find out more information.
DCRT Youth
We offer volunteering, work experience or get involved with our events! Volunteering with us can go towards Duke of Edinburgh award, Scout badges, John Muir award and National Citizen Service. Come along for a taster day and see if you enjoy it! Find more information on DCRT Youth here.
River Guardians School Session
DCRT can offer a wide range of outdoor learning and classroom-based activities, delivered by our experienced teachers, to your school or uniformed group. We are happy to discuss curriculum links and fit educational sessions and activities to suit each class.
At the end of the session each learner is awarded with a FREE River Guardian pack to continue learning about the river at home. More info on Rivers Guardians here.
Family Events
Join us during the school holidays for summer for our Brook Explorers events, where families can learn together. Suitable for all ages, bring your family and discover the underwater world, riverside nature and get crafty!
Environmental Discussion Group Session
We provide a short prompt about the current state of rivers in England, but can also tailor the prompt to your group if there are any particular environmental topics you’d like to discuss!
This group discussion session aims to create a space for people to come together and share their thoughts and feelings on environmental topics. It’s a great opportunity to hear people’s perspectives and what resonates with them in a discussion.
Send us an email at [email protected] to register your interest!
Local Talks
The River Don has fascinating stories to tell and DCRT offers talks on a number of river related subjects including:
- a brief history of the River Don
- Salmon and Eels in the Don Catchment
We can also look to tailor our talks to suggested themes. Talks within the All Hands on the Don project area are provided free of charge, but a space to provide the talk is required.
If you do wish to make a contribution to DCRT for a talk, a suggested donation of £40 is welcome.
Send us an email at [email protected] to register your interest!
Local Walks
There are many beautiful and interesting places along our rivers and DCRT have guided many walks. We also know that spending time in green and blue spaces, is great for our health and wellbeing.
So, if you want to explore and learn more about a local watercourse, bats, wildflowers, birds or other wildlife, we can help you. Maybe you would like to learn more about the heritage of the river, or conduct a group reading, or maybe you would just like to walk and chat!
Whatever your preference, or if you have a totally different idea that you would like to suggest, get in touch!
Volunteering Event
Getting out into green and blue spaces is great for our health and wellbeing and our rivers always need a helping hand. Whether it is a riverside clean up, reducing invasive plants, habitat management, plastic pollution surveys or learning to identify and survey for birds, dragonflies, butterflies or other species, there are lots of ways for you to get involved and help to restore your rivers!
Receive updates
We’re active on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X. We also have two newsletters so you can get updates on what we’ve been up to and events you’d like get involved in!
Community Grant Scheme
The purpose of the All Hands on the Don Community Grant Scheme is to help local organisations undertake projects which focus on the River Don and/or its tributaries. This includes:
- Bringing communities or individuals within a community together, to take action for the River Don and its tributaries, who wish to open up or improve riverside access
- Projects which will assist wildlife within the river corridor through;
- Habitat creation and improvement
- Tackling pollution
- Tackling invasive non-native species
- Providing environmental education
- Projects which will preserve or enhance historic heritage within the river corridor.
- Projects which work with those who would not usually engage with nature.
- Projects connected to the River Don and/or its tributaries, with a strong element of public access or inclusion, such as volunteer involvement.
Grant applications must contribute to at least one of these priorities.
The All Hands On The Don team
Our funders
| Budget | £987k |
| Partners: | National Lottery Heritage Fund, Garfield Weston Foundation, City of Doncaster Council, Environment Agency, Yorkshire Water, FCC Community Fund, CLA Charitable Trust, Angling Trust, local ‘Friends of’ groups. |
| Key outcomes: | Community engagement, habitat restoration. |
| Local watercourse: | River Don |
National Lottery Heritage Fund
The National Lottery Heritage Fund is the largest funder for the UK’s heritage. Using money raised by National Lottery players we support projects that connect people and communities to heritage. Our vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future. From historic buildings, our industrial legacy and the natural environment, to collections, traditions, stories and more. Heritage can be anything from the past that people value and want to pass on to future generations. We believe in the power of heritage to ignite the imagination, offer joy and inspiration, and to build pride in place and connection to the past.
Using money raised by National Lottery players, The National Lottery Heritage Fund supports projects that connect people and communities with the UK’s heritage. All Hands on the Don is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, we have been able to deliver a large community engagement and conservation and restoriation scheme in Doncaster for the first time.
