Background

In September 2004, Norfolk (UK) Freecycle was started by Michelle, a stay-at-home mum from Norwich who'd heard of the Freecycle movement and thought it was a great idea. She was soon joined by Katy, an environmental scientist from Norwich. Together they began to spread the word via radio, TV, newspapers, posters and word-of-mouth, and the group kept on growing. In spring 2005 they recruited some more helpers to share the workload and keep the group running smoothly - John, Jacky, Tim and Nicola joined the team.

With the group at well over 1,000 members and still growing (we thought it was big back in those days!), and covering an impractically large area for people to be interested in collecting items from, it was becoming clear that the moderators needed to think about splitting the group into sub-areas. In September 2005, Linda started the split process with a South Norfolk Freecycle group. By the end of 2005, the county-wide group had assed the 2,000 member mark, making it one of the largest groups in the UK. The split of Norfolk then gathered pace.

In January 2006, new Freecycle groups for Breckland and West Norfolk went live, run by moderators Allen and Dom respectively. In April of that year the Great Yarmouth group was started by Jacky, one of the Norfolk moderators; in June the North Norfolk group was created by Rachael. Katy set up the Norwich group at the same time, and Broadland was started soon afterwards by Michael. With the whole county covered, Norfolk UK Freecyle was then wound down having grown to over 5,000 members.

Some three years later, all the groups are still growing, with the Norwich group far surpassing the size and activity level of the old Norfolk group, and all the districts thriving as well. In July 2009, the Norwich group passed the 20,000 member mark, and West, North and South Norfolk all reached 5,000 soon after, with Breckland near 4,500 and Broadland just under 3,000. We are also pleased to welcome the Waveney group to our team (although strictly they are over the border in Suffolk!), with around 4,000 members. We have sort of lost track of who arrived when, but at present our team of volunteer moderators consists of (main groups in brackets) Katy, John, Ali and Vicki (Norwich), Linda, Sue and Richard (South Norfolk), Beth and Fiona (West Norfolk), Dawn (Broadland and North Norfolk), Allen, Kate and Jac (Breckland), Jacky and Steve (Great Yarmouth) and Cherie (Waveney) - but you will often find several of us helping each other out on various groups, including our Cafe sites, because we are helpful like that!

August 2009 saw tensions rise between the US-based central management of The Freecycle Network (TFN) and some of the UK moderators at committee level. Without going into detail, following the denial of a request for greater autonomy for UK moderators, from September there was a significant (but by no means total) shift of UK groups away from TFN. A new, democratic umbrella organisation was formed and named Freegle - Free Giving, Locally and Easily - and after careful consideration, the Norfolk moderators decided that a move to this new network would best serve our members. We will have greater freedom in how we run and develop our groups, and more control over our publicity, projects and links with other local organisations. The most important thing is that the groups' principles remain the same and they will continue to work in the same way they always did. We are the same team of dedicated, local moderators behind the scenes, and we are still working hard to give people in Norfolk a way to avoid throwing useful stuff away - which is, after all, what we started out to do.

By 2010 we'd become acutely conscious that the Yahoo Groups platform was beginning to hold us back. Our members have given us feedback over the years, and we've built up several volunteer-years of helping members with any Freegle problems, so we know what is important to users and how the system would work in an ideal world. We decided it was time to bite the bullet - turn those ideas into a detailed plan, and apply for funding to turn it into reality. We are very lucky that the Big Lottery Fund have awarded us £10,000 funding half the project. We are grateful for additional support from Norfolk County Council, Heaser Business Consulting Ltd., and Computer Service Centre, and we are also awaiting results from a small number of other funding applications in order to reach our overall target. The service will remain free to use and completely non-profit. You can read more about our plans here.

The local authorities in Norfolk have given us their support since the early days, including links on their websites and mentions in recycling leaflets and council publications. As a 100% voluntary organisation, we are proud to be helping Norfolk reduce the amount it sends to landfill without costing taxpayers a penny!

If you would like to volunteer to help us, you would be most welcome! We are grateful for any assistance. Please contact us!

Last modified: 25th January 2011

Content Copyright © 2011 Norfolk Freegle Moderators. "Freecycle" is Copyright © 2003 The Freecycle Network (http://uk.Freecycle.org). All rights reserved. "Freecycle" and the Freecycle logo are registered trademarks of The Freecycle Network, CTM Reg. No. 4287553.