Kickstart your career

Blaenau Gwent’s resident ecologist Nadine Morgan tells us how volunteering with her Local Nature Partnership enabled her to get her dream job as an ecologist.

We all know that volunteering is great for your mental wellbeing, meeting new people, and helping your community.

But if you are looking for a career in nature conservation, volunteering with your Local Nature Partnership can also help improve your CV and provide you with the necessary skills to take the leap. Just ask Blaenau Gwent’s resident ecologist Nadine Morgan!

Bringing biodiversity to BG schools
Nadine started her career ten years ago as a volunteer with the Local Nature Partnership (then known as the Biodiversity Partnership), working on the Schools Biodiversity Improvement Project.

‘The project worked with schools to help enhance biodiversity within the school grounds, create learning opportunities for school children and cultivate an appreciation of nature conservation and biodiversity,’ says Nadine. ‘The project initially started as a pilot with five schools distributed across the borough, but we eventually expanded to 25 schools.’

Path to employment
She then got the job as the Schools Biodiversity Officer, where she continued to develop the project. She worked with each school to identify the existing biodiversity resources (or lack thereof) and come up with an individual biodiversity management plan.

From 2016 the project expanded to also focus on environmental issues such as recycling, water & flooding, sustainability and climate change.

‘The natural environment is an incredible resource, providing the ideal place to develop skills, improve health & wellbeing, and instil citizenship while cultivating a greater understanding and appreciation of our natural world,’ says Nadine. ‘The role our young people play in developing the world’s interdependent systems is hugely important.’