Beyond Green Dedicated to helping organisations become more sustainable. The organisation inspires action and support organisations through the challenges towards a sustainable future, focusing on what’s important to the business: profitability, managing risks and gaining reputation from green credentials. Beyond Green and Surefoot collaborate on various environmental projects. This has included collaborating in local energy plans on the CobenProject.
Carbon Conversations Started by Rosemary Randall, a psychotherapist, and Andy Brown, an engineer. Drawing on Rosemary’s therapeutic experience with groups and Andy’s technical expertise they created a unique psycho-social project that addresses the practicalities of carbon reduction while taking account of the complex emotions and social pressures that make this difficult.
Climate Justice The issues around Climate change cannot be resolved without a link to social justice and in particular climate justice. The Environmental Right Centre for Scotland’s ‘vision is of a Scotland where every person’s right to live in a healthy environment is fully realised.’ And their aim is ‘to support individuals and communities to use their rights to protect the environment, tackle climate change, and improve local biodiversity and greenspaces for health and wellbeing.’
The Mary Robertson Foundation - Climate Justice: is ‘a centre for thought leadership, education and advocacy on the struggle to secure global justice for those people vulnerable to the impacts of climate change who are usually forgotten - the poor, the disempowered and the marginalised across the world. It is a platform for solidarity, partnership and shared engagement for all who care about global justice, whether as individuals and communities suffering injustice or as advocates for fairness in resource-rich societies. The Foundation provides a space for facilitating action on climate justice to empower the poorest people and countries in their efforts to achieve sustainable and people-centered development.’ Please also see our Climate Justice workshop.
Compassionate Communication Compassionate Communication is an approach to connecting with others by connecting to our commonly-held values and, with practice, increasingly both hearing and speaking from it. We all long to be heard and understood. The capacity to draw out and listen empathically to what is longed for rather than what is being thought about opens up the possibility of a different quality of connection – and a different possibility in how we, ourselves, are seen and heard. We at Surefoot strive to communicate in this way and hope to be able to introduce more people to this effective way of communication through advertising and promoting courses. Much of this work was defined by Marshall Rosenberg who regularly participates in peace negotiations world-wide. Centre for Compassionate Communication Centre for Nonviolent Communication
Ecolinguistics Ecolinguistics looks into how language creates the story of life-sustaining interactions of humans, other species and the physical environment. Ecolinguistic theories supports the view on humans not only as part of society, but also as part of the larger ecosystems that we depend on. Ecolinguistics can be used to address key ecological issues, from climate change and biodiversity loss to environmental justice. Read more on The International Ecolinguistics Association and follow the free online course The Stories We Live By to learn about the ecolinguistics terms and use. The University of Gloucestershire and The International Ecolinguistics Association support the course, which is created by Arran Stibbe, Professor of Ecological Linguistics. At Surefoot we look forward to getting more involved in this area. Let us know if your organisation or company would like to hear more.
Resilience Resilience is not just the ability to ‘bounce back’ and keep going in a difficult situation. What’s even more important is the ability to ‘break through’, discovering new sources of inner strength to be better able to change the situation for the better. Support from the Big Lottery Fund enabled us to develop and pilot the resilience workshops that we can now tailor to your specific needs.
Seeding our Future (SOF) is a non-profit initiative, started in 2017. The founder and main funder is Alan Heeks, a social entrepreneur and writer. Alan has been exploring resilience for many years: he has led numerous workshops on this theme, and set up Hazel Hill Wood, a residential centre showing how to learn resilience from natural ecosystems. He is now working closely with Professor Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaptation approach to climate change, exploring in particular how this can be applied with businesses, communities and public service providers. Surefoot collaborates with Seeding our Future to offerFuture Conversations workshops as well as others around resilience and well-being.
The Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI) brings low carbon leaders and practitioners from business, finance and the public sector together to turn good ideas into reality. ECCI joins up forward thinkers to accelerate & catalyse large-scale low carbon projects. And use their network to help companies drive innovation into their supply chains and create new kinds of low carbon products and services. They collaborate with government, enterprise and academics to help craft smart climate and energy policy. The ECCI brings their networks together to create face to face and online learning programmes that build the capacity and skills required to succeed in a low carbon future. The ECCI helped Pam get the Innovation Award fromThe Melting Pot that got Surefoot set up as a community interest company.
The Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC) is an independent charity developing participatory approaches to researching, communicating and connecting around cultural stories for a more democratic, equitable and sustainable society. PIRC has a 40-year record of catalytic research, championing the public interest and informing public policy, and a more recent history of championing the vital role of cultural stories and movement-building in social change. Surefoot has contributed to values training and other work led by PIRC.
Transition Network The Transition town model is a way to create initiatives that rebuild community resilience and reduce CO2 emissions. Ultimately it’s about creating a healthy human culture, one that meets our needs for community, livelihoods and fun. Surefoot supports the aims of Transition and provides support for several transition groups through our workshops and projects.
Values - operating ethically From the Common Cause Foundation ‘A common set of values, which we call compassionate values, underpin such social and environmental concern. Everyone holds these values to some extent – indeed the majority of people privilege these values above all others. Strengthening and giving voice to these values will help to create responses to a wide range of social and environmental challenges – from climate change to social exclusion. Indeed, it is difficult to foresee long-lasting and adequate responses to some of today’s most pressing challenges emerging without working to promote these values. Common Cause is a network of people working to rebalance cultural values, creating a more equitable, sustainable and democratic society. This work, drawing on extensive collaboration with some of the world’s leading social psychologists, is establishing key principles and insights to achieve this.’ Surefoot and several of our associates are part of this network and we have been applying the Common Cause approach in our work for many years - including designing and delivering the UNESCO awarding Action Learning Programme ‘Communities with a Common Cause” Surefoot supports learning about, and implementation of, Common Cause principles and practice on the ground in Scotland. We integrate Common Cause principles into much of our work and training, as well as offering workshops specifically on values.