Volunteer Voices, Peter Whitby: Building community resilience through sustainability and connection.

Because this story tells someone's journey towards becoming a volunteer, it is a slightly longer read approximately 15-20 minutes read time. 

Maesgeirchen is an Invest Local area with a strong core of volunteers driving forward the success of the Invest Local project, named MaesNi. The group is focused on building up resilience by embedding projects within the heart of the community, to increase access to vital resources for residents of the estate and surrounding area and provide support in the event of a crisis. One of the group's long-term goals is to develop an overall sense of connectedness and wellbeing for local people, by establishing a community hub on the estate. 

Peter Whitby is one of MaesNi’s volunteers who has been with the project since the group first began working to establish its presence in the community. Since then, his role has developed from supporting the community through his business ‘Project Greener than Green’, which looks at the possibility of making the community self-sufficient through harnessing green energy options, into him taking on one of the most active roles within the group as voluntary co-director and Community Development Officer. 

BCT went to talk to Peter to find out about his personal journey, what led to him moving from Manchester to Maesgeirchen, and his experience of volunteering with the MaesNi group to date. “I was working for an insolvency company owned by my father and my uncle, that was my first foot in the door into a job and work. They then sent me on to do my Microsoft qualifications to do the service and the wiping of confidential information from hard drives and stuff like that. From there, I was supposed to go into the RAF and did a couple of months training, but failed my medical, so I shouldn't have done any training whatsoever. From there, I went to work for a Co-op, for a very, very long time – altogether I worked at, I think, it was like 20, something different stores. What ended up happening was at the first two stores so many people kept leaving, but I just stuck with it, and because of that I got trained up on everything. Because I knew everything inside and out, I got sent to other stores all the time, and with that I got trained further and further and further, but I never actually got promotions, I kept getting passed up for someone else, so I think this is what brought me to having my own bike shop, because I just had enough.” 

Peter went on to explain how he has always had a love of motorcycles and grew up in a family where the kitchen often played host to his father's motorcycle repairs. “In the background of all of that, my dad was a big biker, so I've been around motorcycles my entire life. You know, there were parts of engines in the kitchen, often all sorts. I got my first bike when I was 17 and I’ve still got it now in my back garden. I knew nothing about mechanics at first, but going right back to the beginning, my bike kept getting stolen and the first time I got offered £250 for a complete write-off of the bike. I thought no, not a chance, and went out and bought a welder and an angle grinder and made myself a custom job out of it. After that I kept winning trophies, so I thought, ok, I must be good at something here. That bike still runs, and it's still serviced every single year, even though it's now part of the furniture in the back garden it will stay, because that's what started off everything for me.” 

Once Peter's love of motorcycles had been ignited, and as his technical knowledge grew, he decided that his instinctive way of working with technology presented an opportunity for him to take a step into a different career.  He opened a motorbike shop and explained that the venture was very successful. However, through a series of devastating accidents that took a toll on Peter’s health, he was set on a path towards a very different future. “I had my first accident, which was a hit and run, and that put me out of work for a while, but I kept going. Then, I went and helped a mate, at another bike shop and had an accident there, and that was the end of the road for me. I lost the use of my right hand, and I became very, very unwell because I couldn't work. I couldn't live anymore because I couldn't ride. So, my whole world got closed off. I became very sheltered, and whilst that was going on, I thought I can't not pay people. So, I continued to pay for other people's wages and kept things going, but I didn't pay for my own property, and inevitably I lost it. However, it just so happens that at the same time, a member of the family up here contacted us, I don’t know how the timing was so good, but it was, they said they had a house in Maesgeirchen and so we moved up here within a couple of weeks. But I was still closed off to the world, I wouldn’t see anyone and I wouldn't speak to anybody.” 

Peter explained that sadly he isn’t a stranger to ill health having struggled with complicated health issues since he was young, but that the accidents made a marked impact on his physical capacity and mental wellbeing and that, after moving to Maesgeirchen, things didn’t initially improve. “I've been well and truly through the mill over the years, right from being a kid, I had an undiagnosed stomach condition. They still haven't worked out what it is, even though they've diagnosed me many times. They classified me as terminal and at 19 I was told I wasn’t going to make 21, then at 21 I was told it wasn't going to make 25, but I surpassed both of those. I did manage to get a job up here, I was working at a Co-op again. It lasted about six months before I was let go under medical grounds as I collapsed at the till. That's when people started realising that I was losing a considerable amount of weight, I went from about 58 kilos down to 42 and I couldn't eat at all, I was put on to a drip feed. However even that didn't last for very long, that's when I was diagnosed with PTSD and as anorexic with bulimic tendencies. Even now I still struggle to keep anything down still feel real pain. That's a very difficult thing to go through when you're around people and they're constantly looking at you, they can see that you're in pain, and they'll ask you the question and you say, ‘I know that there's nothing wrong, it's just my head.’ I'm still recovering from it now, but I am happy to say that I've finally hit 60 kilos.” 

At this point, Peter found himself isolated – getting to grips with life in an unfamiliar town and, like the rest of us, navigating a world that was fast plunging into a COVID-19 storm. However, a chance meeting in the street with Jess Silvester, MaesNi’s former Community Support Officer, presented Peter with the chance to start building tentative connections back out into the world. “My dad was very, very charitable and they did a lot in the biking world for charities. So, I did the same, including many a food hub for the homeless in Manchester. Then when I came up here, I wanted something to do like that. The first thing that got me involved in anything to do with MaesNi, about two and a half years into being here, I accidentally bumped into Jess. She was doing fruit and veg boxes, which I thought was brilliant. I think she realised right from the get-go, she needed to talk to me one-to-one. She had a good chat with me about it and updated me on everything and said ‘Look these are when the meetings are, you don't have to sit there in person’ so I joined one of the next meetings through Zoom. From then things escalated quickly and I think it was a couple of days after that when the pandemic hit. My neighbour was a lovely old lady who used to have a paid gardener, but during the pandemic that had to stop. I could see it was hurting her, she wouldn't come outside and sit in the garden anymore. She was one of the only people that I talked to, so, I jumped the fence and cut the hedge for her while she was asleep. When she saw it, she said, ‘This is just amazing’ and teared up. So, when I next spoke to Jess and, at this point, I'm only talking to maybe three people out of four thousand living here, she said I could put in for some money if that's what I wanted to do. So, I started doing the gardens for all the older people for nothing. You did get the odd one or two that would try to offer you some money for it, and I ended up saying ‘No it’s a treat for you’. I made a lot of friends from that, then COVID-19 limitations started really restricting things and I lost a lot of friends in that period. And a lot of that equipment just sat about for a long time until I found out about the gardening clubs and stuff like that, so it's all still in use today. However, even though COVID-19 was still around, I had some tools so I just got more and more involved in repairs on the estate say, if there was a broken fence I'd go and see if I could fix it.”  

After Peter had begun building connections on the estate, cautiously taking one day at a time with his long-term health battles, he had the idea to start a project to benefit the residents of the estate using green energy sources to lower financial strain on households. The project grew quickly but required significant research, resources, and commitment from Peter. He explained how the idea first developed from a simple solar panel he was given and grew into a plan to build a resource for the estate that would later be supported by MaesNi. “I had this idea that started from one solar panel my granddad had given me off his camper van. I thought, if that's making free energy for me (and I use the term free energy very loosely), but, If I'm given a solar panel that cost me nothing and then I use it to generate electricity it is, free energy, as far as I’m concerned. I went from that and just running a little water pump, to thinking about using the solar panel to heat the water up. So, I made a solar thermal panel – you can buy these ready-made, but I’m not one to buy something if I can make it –and within a couple of days it was heating up a hot tub. It wasn't getting up to 40 degrees, but the majority of the electrical needs for heating it were free. So, I thought how I could make it bigger? I started buying up used panels and set a few up in the garden to test angles and stuff like that and I started putting electrical meters on absolutely everything to monitor the usage. One of the best comparisons, I did was a live-stream video of two tumble dryers running – one was a heat pump, the other was a conventional element. The element one was running at around two thousand watts and the heat pump one was running about five to six hundred watts. Both were producing the same amount of heat, both extracting the same amount of moisture. That translated into a cost difference of eight to nine pence, but you have four or five pence per hour of one machine running versus fifteen to twenty pence of the other machine running. Today you'll be looking at about thirty pence versus ninety pence, it's a big deal. The video ended up going everywhere on the internet and people started commenting and saying, ‘Thanks I've now bought a heat pump dryer’ it's such a simple thing but it makes a big difference.” 

With Peter's research attracting lots of attention from the public and the media and providing evidence that showed the concept he was investing his precious time in had the potential to change people's lives for the better, he took a huge leap of faith and created a company limited by guarantee. However, with Peter working single-handedly, the direction he had in mind would need more support if he was to achieve the goal he was aiming for. “After becoming an official company under the name Project Greener Than Green, I was struggling to find a fund that would pay me a salary to some extent. So, I approached MaesNi and put in a request for £3,600, which was the equivalent of £300 per month for a full year. That was for me to survey and canvass the estate to try and get ideas about people's energy usage. Because people could see that I was showing them how to save money in ways they could action without it costing them a fortune, people gave me this information. I was just about getting by on £300 a month, but it wasn't covering the costs of any equipment, tools, anything like that. Therefore, I tried working with other communities to raise some funds. We've now done two big off-grid systems. Both are in Ffestiniog, one is an off-grid recording studio and the other one is classified as a potting shed. It was amazing that they gave me the chance to do that and, in turn, it has funded a majority of the equipment that the company owns for example their thermal imaging camera which is an essential piece of equipment.” 

By now Peter had built up a wealth of research on how to help residents on the estate improve their energy use. But as Peter also remained a central volunteer member of the MaesNi group, he became aware that, due to a change in management, there would potentially be a gap in support for the group. In turn this meant there was a risk that some of the core fundamental asks of the estate via the Invest Local project might become difficult to deliver. Ultimately this meant that Peter would take the decision to shift focus from Project Greener Than Green, to take on a support role for the group. “There came a point with MaesNi, where things were quite uncertain and some people had left and moved on, but things were still in process and some parts of the project were at a critical stage, so we needed that support network and that driving group of volunteers and workers to be secure. So, due to the shift in roles in MaesNi and the need to get that central support for the Invest Local project back on track, I started as a voluntary co-director for the group in April 2023. Then, later in the year, Jess (who was amazing in her role) moved on to another company and I applied for the role of Community Development Officer and was appointed in a month.”

With Project Greener Than Green waiting in the background, Peter has taken on a huge new responsibility, one that he takes on with a sound understanding of, and respect for, the level of commitment it will take to continue developing the projects put in place by MaesNi. Moreover, he is aware also of the need to work closely with the group volunteers, residents of MaesG, the local council and other partners in order to deliver one of the key requests of the Invest Local project in the area – that by the end of the project, there will be a self-sufficient community hub on the estate for the use of community groups and residents. “Within the next two years, the funding for my position will stop. Does it mean that I'm going to leave? No, it just means that my focus and my time can be put back on to other things. However, I'm hoping that by the time we get to that point, there'll be something happening here physically, with us hopefully working with a housing association on a new build that will be environmentally friendly and ecological, so it should cover most of its overheads and I'm more than happy to be as involved as I can be with that. In the meantime, the evidence of me being here is really all down to numbers. In the last year, this place didn’t make any profit, but since I was put in post it has made over one thousand pounds and started making money. I don’t know if it's going to cover its overheads, but if there's someone that can make it happen, I hope I can.” 

Peter's journey is a story that presents a picture of someone committed to doing the right thing in the face of adversity. He’s overcome huge physical emotional and material battles to build himself back up and has never lost sight of the need to help the people around him, even though taking that path has often meant taking on more pressure in the long run, it has been a decision he has made without hesitation.  

Across our Invest Local groups, BCT often talks with people on a similar path, who have been drawn to the programme because they know all too well the challenges life can throw at us and they want to lend a hand to other people facing those situations, rather than let them be alone. However, it‘s also through this human act of giving, and of committing to acting as part of a community, that our volunteers tell us they have found a sense of purpose and in some instances rebuilt their lives and achieved things they thought they never could. “It’s quite literally revived me, it gave me my life back, if it wasn't for MaesNi and me bumping into Jess that day, I still wouldn't have my life back. As time has gone on, I've met more and more people who slowly began to accept me. And finally, I get to experience real, simple joys in life again. Just last week I managed to go out and buy a washing machine. That’s something that's been needed and necessary for the longest of times, and I own a company that works with white goods. I put up with a seven kilo washing machine that was well and truly on its way out for nearly a year, until I was in a paid position again to be able to go out and buy one. That level of pride you can’t buy, you have to work for it. But it's a huge deal because I own it, I've not financed it, that's mine. Which in turn means that it’s my daughter's too. It's another thing that, if we needed to, we could sell and start again, and that sense of security to me is wonderful.”