January can feel like a very strange month. In reality, it’s a welcoming gateway to a raft of potential and a wealth of possibilities that the unfolding year could offer. Yet in Britain, it’s often a cold, wet and difficult month to traverse. This year it has been made especially challenging given our current global landscape. However, we have a fabulous announcement to make which counters that, spectacularly!
It is with great delight and much excitement we share an enormous ray of sunshine and warmth as we welcome an esteemed Patron to the fold: Clare Nasir.
Clare hails from Buckinghamshire, UK. Her Pakistani father spent his childhood in Tanzania before moving to England where he met Clare’s mother. Clare has lived all over the UK but home is now in Cheshire with her husband and 11 year old daughter.
Clare’s working life is, as she puts it, “immersed in climatology and meteorology”. Her depth of understanding, wealth of experience and personal drive on the issue of climate change sits at the core of all she does.
Clare has a BSc in Mathematics and an MSc in Oceanography both from the University of Plymouth. Clare is already a familiar face to many of us. She joined the Met Office, trained as a meteorologist and has been gracing the airwaves and our television screens as a weather forecaster, presenter and producer since 1994. As well as presenting the weather Clare has hosted several series, including CBBC’s ‘Fierce Earth’, wherein she investigated globally changing weather patterns and how extreme environments impact people.
As well as her regular work at the Met Office she also works in renewable communications, she promotes air pollution campaigns and reforestation documentaries through partnerships with the Woodland Trust, Client Earth and ReGen Future Capital.
Clare’s experience and reputation across a variety of platforms has been cultivated over decades of working in the media and environmental sciences. She’s also the author “What Does Rain Smell Like,” and a weather inspired set of children’s books, including ‘Colin The Cloud’, sparking curiosity and inspiration in young minds.
As if that wasn’t enough, she’s kindly agreed to help us too. We are inspired by her positive energy and her determination to raise critical awareness of the global importance of planting trees in the tropics and taking care of the people who plant them.
We asked Clare what drew her to our organisation, she replied:
I became aware of The Word Forest Organisation early in 2020 and distant observations of their work grew to an immense respect for their vision and how it translates so practically into effective results.
Whether on our doorstep or thousands of miles away in East Africa we all have a responsibility to restore balance in communities and in nature – and that’s exactly what Tracey, Simon and their team do every day at Word Forest. The skills necessary to run such an operation starts with love, their love is infectious, we all feel their heartbeat.
I am incredibly humbled to be asked to be Patron of The Word Forest Organisation because when I see what they do every day I am personally inspired to do more. Word Forest has given me that opportunity – and more so a challenge – that I wholeheartedly accept.
Their focus and dedication to sustaining forests, planting new trees and providing a platform of resources and new skills is bathed in a deep love for all living things on Earth.
There’s not much that renders our team speechless, but that certainly did!
Clare, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for joining us as Patron – it will make an enormous difference to our #SmallButMighty charity and it’ll boost our efforts to continue to do what we’re doing; sending love and healing to our planet through reforestation, education and the support of communities on the front line of climate change.
2021 – bring it on!
The Team
P.S. You can find Clare’s books here
