The Surefoot Effect - Community Interest Company 

(but you can call us Surefoot)
The Surefoot Effect has been set up as a Community Interest Company to support a community of practice working with values based change methods to protect the environment and promote social justice. We work in ways that are inclusive and participatory.
Our programmes and trainings are rooted in a commitment to supporting people to recognise and explore the roles of values, attitudes, emotions and motivation – and the central role of these factors in our own and other people’s behaviours.
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We at Surefoot strive to live and exemplify the values we are working to promote. As a Community Interest Company, we serve the community of practice and the wider group of people involved. For example, payment for workshops, training, consultancy and mentoring from the many organisations interested in using values-based approaches to deliver change is used to subsidise delivery to individuals and community groups. As a CIC, all income is used to further the work of the organisation and all assets belong to the community.

People in Surefoot

Gazelle Buchholtz, Associate
​​Gazelle‘s focus is communication of environmental subjects. Her project ‘Your World in Words,’ developed in collaboration with Dr Ann Hodson from the University of Dundee and Surefoot, is based on workshops in creative writing and guided reading with the natural world at its core.
The topic ‘ecolinguistics’ has Gazelle’s attention and she looks forward to developing work in this area. Ecolinguistics focuses on how language creates the story of life-sustaining interactions of humans, other species and the physical environment. 
Pamela Candea, Associate, Managing Director​
Pamela has been working to promote sustainable society actively since returning to a cherished ambition after a long career in the commercial world in 2007. She now works with community, public sector, and commercial organisations to help bring about change using values based methods.
A successful and experienced leader of projects, programmes, and departments, skilled in building relationships to create groups from disparate partners to deliver solutions and effect change. 
After receiving a Social Innovation Award from the Melting Pot in Edinburgh, and supported by the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation, set up The Surefoot Effect, CIC, to provide a hub for practitioners working with values-based change. Current work through Surefoot includes design and facilitation of workshops and action learning programmes, coaching and mentoring, and training of facilitators.
​Jean Carletta, Associate
 Jean has a background in communication technology research and research project management. Since 2009, she has been applying her skills to understand why church and community building heating costs so much with so little effect. As a trained Carbon Conversations facilitator, she went on to found HeatHack, a volunteer group that helps building operators understand thermal comfort, heat loss, and how to know if a heating system is operating efficiently. 
HeatHack is currently devising a set of exercises that will help the operators understand their premises, think about their buildings’ lower carbon futures, and create a thermal profile that can be passed to professionals to give them more certainty about what to do with these difficult but important community spaces. ​
Liz Corke, Director
Liz has been working on sustainability, climate change education and nature based outdoor learning in the third sector since 2008. She is currently working on a community climate change project in Penicuik as well as delivering freelance nature and environmental learning.
Liz first became involved in Carbon Conversations in 2011 and has since facilitated many groups. She is also a commercial Carbon Conversations facilitator and Facilitator Trainer. Liz lives in Fife and loves to be outside as much as possible. She co-owns a woodland, loves walking, playing football and having adventures with her two young sons.

​Ben Cuddon, Director​
Ben studied Middle Eastern languages and history at university and lived for periods in Syria and Iran. While subsequently working as a History teacher he took part in a Carbon Conversations group which inspired an interest in climate change. In 2018 he set up the charity Climate Ed which teaches children about climate change.
Shivali Fifield, Associate
Shivali is a life-long environmentalist, involved in various conservation activities in the UK and abroad.
A few years ago, Shivali worked with Surefoot to adapt Carbon Conversations for low-income households, using deliberative workshops to become healthier, greener and resilient!
Working with disadvantaged groups in Glasgow, her PhD used environmental justice theory and participation action research to challenge greenspace inequality. Shivali is part of the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland. 
The aim is to support communities to use their rights to protect the environment, tackle climate change, and improve local biodiversity and greenspaces for health and wellbeing. Shivali is also a trustee for Greenspace Scotland.
Tony Herrmann, Associate
​Tony Herrmann worked as a neighbourhood community worker for 25 years, managed a community work training organisation in Yorkshire and co-led the Government funded Yorkshire Regional Empowerment Partnership. He has a passion for working with people at all levels to help them create projects and activities to achieve their ambitions. His expertise includes community empowerment, training, evaluation and facilitation. Over the last 10 years he has increasingly focused his work to support and develop people and organisations addressing sustainability and the climate crisis.
He is a founder director of Zero Carbon Yorkshire, establishing a Yorkshire hub for Carbon Conversations and supporting other Leeds based grass roots initiatives tackling the climate crisis. He is also a commercial Carbon Conversations facilitator and Facilitator Trainer.
Tony is currently coordinating a project to develop community climate action hubs in Leeds as one element of a 5-year National Lottery funded project led by the Our Future Leeds movement.
Osbert Lancaster, Associate
​Osbert Lancaster believes new approaches, rooted in a sense of creative connection with others and the rest of nature, are essential for our communities, organisations and society to flourish. His training and advice supports people, groups and organisations to be more effective at promoting, supporting and bringing about change for good.
He draws on 20 years of working with inspiring thinkers and innovators in government agencies, community groups, businesses, universities and NGOs. 
Osbert is an Honorary Fellow at the School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh and was previously member of the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund, and WWF Scotland’s Advisory Council.
Rebecca Nestor, Associate
​Based in Oxford, UK, Rebecca is an organisational consultant, facilitator and coach with a particular focus on supporting people and organisations with the emotional impacts of the climate and ecological crisis. She has research-based, professional and personal experience of what it feels like to work on climate change.
Rebecca is researching the emotional experience of leaders in organisations that engage the public on climate change, has consulted to several groups and organisations in the climate field, and has been an activist for over ten years. 
This is coupled with a deep understanding, through training and reflective practice at the Tavistock Centre, of the psychology of work, especially its confusing or difficult aspects - and long experience of working with groups and teams, organisational consultancy and coaching in the UK public sector, higher education and charities.
Kerry Riddell, Associate
​Kerry’s interest lies in facilitating change. She has worked in a range of contexts to develop and deliver programmes which enable people to make change to their lives, community and environment. Over the last 15 years Kerry has developed a wide range of innovative programmes focussing on environmental engagement in the UK and New Zealand. Working for The Conservation Volunteers and the NZ Department of Conservation, she established local and national projects focussing on collaborative community environmental action, health, young people, outdoor learning and citizen science.
Kerry currently works for LGBT Youth Scotland, managing a range of programmes in SW Scotland which empower lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people to be embraced within the Scottish family at home, school and in communities. She works with external partners to ensure that the services they provide value, include and support all LGBT people.
Euri Bartlome Vidal, Associate
​Euri has worked in conservation projects in Swaziland, South Africa, Madagascar, the Czech Republic and Belgium. He is an experienced Carbon Conversations Facilitator and Trainer. Projects include work for the Energy and Sustainability at the University of Edinburgh to set up a university-wide network of projects that reduced CO2 emissions by engaging with staff. He runs workshops about communication and behaviour change in relation to climate change. He has also attended several European conferences on social and environmental issues by invitation.
Euri is a graduate and alumni of the international educational organisation United World Colleges which is deeply committed to sustainability and a low-carbon future. The organisation was formerly sponsored by Nelson Mandela and has a presence in more than 140 countries, with an alumni network of more than 50,000 from 181 countries. Euri is fluent in Spanish and English and is conversant in French as well as Italian.
Georgina Wilson, Associate
Georgina is founder and CEO of BUD, working as overseer, serial social entrepreneur, community organiser, programme designer, project manager, systems thinking, facilitator, host and coach. She supports leaders for positive change in enterprise and community using a variety of methods and tools. Her focus is to enable emerging leaders to unearth their potential and power and to move them towards action and creating change. Georgina has previously collaborated with TfL, local authorities, Semble, Power to Change, Specsavers, Community Organisers Ltd and more.
In Memory of Katherine Simpson, Director   
Very sadly, Kate passed away in August 2018.  We her colleagues and the world of climate action miss her.
Kate’s main focus was carbon management and wider sustainability since 2008 when reading Six Degrees and realising the urgency of climate change motivated her to move to Cornwall to study Renewable Energy.  
Inspired by the work of Mike Berners-Lee and his call for leadership to come from everyone, along with the need for people to develop an intuitive feeling for carbon, Kate was passionate about promoting carbon literacy and empowering people to take positive, meaningful action.
Working for engineering design consultancy Sweco, Kate helped a diverse range of clients to reduce carbon. She was seconded part time as CR&S Manager into the Anglian Water @one Alliance, pioneering leaders in infrastructure carbon reduction, as well as being the Sustainability Team Lead for the construction partnership delivering the British Antarctic Survey’s station refurbishment and redevelopment programme. She designed and ran two water industry focussed Carbon Conversations groups at the @One Alliance.
Surefoot Effect