Community group volunteer, Kyle Dodd, 34, is helping other volunteers to record local footpaths and keep Wythenshawe’s recreational spaces neat and tidy through the development of a homemade app.

The group, the Wythenshawe Waste Warriors, have been cleaning up the region’s parks, wooded areas and green spaces since they were founded in 2018.

Now, thanks to Kyle’s mobile application being launched, the eco-change makers are excited about expanding their reach, allowing for more people to become volunteers and record the region’s lost history.

Kyle said:

“As I work in IT, it got me thinking, is there anything else I can do to support? So, during the most recent lockdown I ended up developing an app. At first, this was very much for anyone to log in and report graffiti, broken bollards and glass on the floor. Since then, it’s really grown arms and legs and we’ve started to record where long-lost footpaths have been buried underneath grass and not maintained.”

Kyle and the other Warriors, led by founder and Chair, John Paul Coe, referred to historical maps to see how much of the past they had uncovered.

The greenway is still being dug out and maintained by famous volunteers in the group, such as ‘Undercover Dave’ and the local MP Mike Kane.

Thanks to a tremendous team effort, they, and some of the Warriors, have dug out various paths along ‘The Manchester Green Trail’, a walking circuit made of the many different routes that connects many of the region’s parks, woodlands and open spaces.

The volunteers have it on good authority that some of these paths near to Mill Pond Fields, Blackcarr Woods and Crowland Hill, to name a few, haven’t been uncovered fully for decades.

Following the exciting discoveries, Kyle has since turned his attention to creating a live mapping system.

The visual map, which works similarly to using Google Maps, will not only signpost hazards, such as fly tipping hot spots and overgrown spaces, but reveal where the lost paths can be accessed.