Suzie Harvey - volunteer Tree Charter social media champion

[Suzie] 
I've been interested in environmental organisations probably all my life, but never either had the time or the money to help out because I work full time, got a family. Actually, I was surfing online and saw the Woodland Trust had these options to do social media and I thought, well that's something that I could actually do, so I kind of jumped at it. 

[Matt Larsen-Daw, project lead, The Charter for Trees, Woods and People] 
The Charter for Trees, Woods and People has been a project led by the Woodland Trust for the last three years. The aim of it is to have an articulation of why trees are important to us and what we can do to ensure that we have trees and woods in our lives going forward. It was a really clear thing for us that Suzie should be nominated. She’s one of the first champions that signed up and Suzie set up a dedicated Twitter account and has been retweeting us, but also finding relevant stories from across social media that really convey what the charter’s all about, and it’s been really, really important to us to have that kind of grassroots promotion of the charter that hasn’t come from one of the organisations, it’s actually come from just somebody who’s passionate about trees. 

[Suzie]  
And that was just really a case of sending out tweets to encourage people, to drive them to the tree charter website, and then we moved on to getting people to sign the tree charter. In addition, I also took on an online campaigning role and that was really just trying to promote the Woodland Trust campaigns for various things: ancient woodland, that sort of thing. 

[Matt] 
She instantly started to put a lot more time in than we'd actually asked for because of her genuine passion for the issue and for trees. She's been tirelessly posting and looking for opportunities to promote the charter. It’s been a real sort of labour of love throughout. 

[Suzie] 
I think campaigns can make a difference, yes. The only way you're going to get people to hear about them and support them is by promoting them. 

[Matt] 
She recently signed up as a super campaigner, which means that she’s going to do this kind of work on a more broad spectrum of issues and campaigns for the Woodland Trust. 

[Suzie] 
The Woodland Trust has been really supportive in what I do. So, they've made it very easy for me to volunteer. They're very supportive and clear and very grateful for what you do, which is lovely.