The Everyone’s Environment Pathway: Case Studies

Growing the evidence base at Friends, Families & Travellers (Explore)

During a period of flooding in York, Friends, Families & Travellers (FFT) realized that gypsies and travellers living on a caravan site couldn’t be reached by the emergency services, and hadn’t been considered in emergency planning for the area.

This community are such a small population within each geographical area they don’t make it onto the radar.

Following this event, FFT started holding discussions on how environmental impacts of the climate crisis would impact their community, as well as how they interacted with existing organisational objectives.

It didn’t take much thinking, once you bring them together, to establish what the issues are.

Priority areas were identified with the board. From there FFT took the task to their policy and case work teams to look for evidence. Initially, engaging a stretched policy team was a challenge, so FFT prioritised growing the evidence as a high level objective, rather than giving fixed targets. This allowed teams to build insight gathering into existing conversations, normalising this as part of their yearly work programme and growing momentum.

The result was the production of an environment briefing informed by insight from gypsies and travellers. This briefing has been used extensively, both as an internal resource and in conversations with other organisations trying to resolve the evidence gap.

Things have taken on a momentum of their own.

Drawing connections between the environmental crises and racial inequality at the Race Equality Foundation (Reflect)

The Race Equality Foundation (REF) has been tackling environmental issues within their own organisation for over 25 years. At first this was focussed on reducing their emissions: they took steps to reduce the number of cars used by their workforce and encouraged their staff and people with lived experience they work with, to use public transport rather than driving.

Then, in 2005, changes to the Congestion Charge in London were proposed, which sparked a lively debate within REF’s community, as many ethnic minority communities were going to struggle to manage the increased cost. In 2019 when ULEZ was introduced, the same points were raised. It was then that REF began to consider the disproportionate impact that environmental policy could have on ethnic minority communities.

As an organisation, REF felt that [protesting the congestion charge] wasn’t the answer, the answer was to make sure mitigations were put in place to avoid over impacting certain groups.

REF began to put environmental issues on their wider organisational agenda. This began by engaging the board of trustees and working with them to recognise the clear links between REF’s core mission and the impact of the environmental crises on ethnic minority communities. In engaging the board, REF have found updates that are focussed on narrative more than data more impactful in keeping these discussions front and centre.

Young people’s voice at Woodcraft Folk (Reflect)

Equipping their members with the skills to enact change is a key feature of Woodcraft Folk’s approach. In a project called All Change, children between the ages of 8 and 12 were educated in carbon literacy and given the skills they needed to lobby for change within their local environment.

So they went back into their schools and to their local politicians to demand change where they see it. And it was really really really powerful to see 9 and 10 years olds training their teachers in carbon literacy.

This drive for change has also been applied to Woodcraft Folk: its young people used their skills to submit motions at the AGM that have since shifted the charity’s culture and strategy to increase environmental action.

Coordinating a sector response at Woodcraft Folk (Act)

As an outdoor education charity, Woodcraft Folk’s activities happen in nature, so awareness of the environmental crises has long been foregrounded in its activities.

Recently, Woodcraft Folk set up a Resilience Roundtable to bring together its peers in the outdoor education sector to share their common goals and aims regarding environmental action, discuss challenges they’d faced, and signpost to best practice. Initially a one-off event, this group now meets quarterly, with shared knowledge banks, and individual partnerships and collaborations thriving outside of the roundtable setting.

It was really useful for me to understand that a network of people exist across our sector that we can reach out to for help.

Embedding environmental action in a strategy at the Race Equality Foundation (Act)

To sustain the momentum of its environmental work, the Race Equality Foundation (REF) has recently updated its theory of change, mission statement, and vision statement to better integrate sustainability, ensuring that all future organisational activities will be conducted through a lens which considers the social impact of the environmental crisis.

A shared agenda is the key part of this.

Centering environmental action at Reach Volunteering (Act)

As CEO, Janet Thorne worked with her board of trustees to centre the environmental crises in Reach Volunteering’s strategy, by reframing the organisational definition of a ‘sustainable future’ to include the climate crisis and equity as they refreshed their vision and mission.

With the board commitment and it being in our strategic framework, it did bring it front of mind for team members. One of the things that came out of that was the service team noticing, anecdotally, how many environmental and climate focused organisations used our service, and how they were growing.

In their ‘Volunteer for Climate’ campaign, Reach Volunteering highlighted these organisations, promoting opportunities where people could use their skills for climate action on a voluntary basis. Reach Volunteering encouraged environmental organisations to offer many, varied volunteer roles to ensure there was a rich mix of opportunities for the volunteers.

The success of the campaign has led to it becoming a permanent fixture. While there was no dedicated funding for the project, and capacity is tight in Reach Volunteering’s small team, they were able to accommodate this project as it was so closely aligned to their existing services.

The team found a way to achieve their vision and mission by responding to an existing opportunity.

Building unlikely coalitions at Disability Rights UK (Act)

Disability Rights UK (DRUK) began engaging with the subject of disability and climate change through research, seeking to understand the issues facing Disabled people related to the environmental crises, and the work that was already happening. This research was collated into a report which strongly demonstrated how disproportionately affected disabled people would be through climate change and nature loss.

Following this initial research DRUK have lent their expertise, along with lived and learned experience, to multiple projects focused on the environmental crises.

With Greenpeace, DRUK advised on the Global Plastics Treaty, rescoping a blanket ban on plastics by highlighting the needs of disabled people and their plastic use. DRUK is currently working with Extinction Rebellion to create accessible routes and facilitation for climate protests, which will accommodate not only wheelchair users but those with sensory needs and other considerations.

DRUK are also developing a coalition of Disabled activists across the globe—starting conversations and discussions around the intersection of disability and the climate crisis. They hope this will help awaken other organisations to the impacts.

Within DRUK, shared learning on the impact of the climate crisis on Disabled people is informing policy work across the organisation.

Climate change is bleeding across all these areas of policy including poverty, housing and social care, benefits. What it’s done is given a climate aspect to every area of policy work that we’re doing.

Critical reflection at Groundwork UK (Learn)

Groundwork was set up with a specific remit to make connections between the social and environmental issues being faced by disadvantaged communities in the UK.

The genesis of our organisation was…how to embed community development principles into the task of regenerating the physical environment generally, but then use that as a springboard for wider environmental action and consciousness.

As the organisation grew in scale and employed more specialists this led to the development of programmes and services that were more exclusively targeted at addressing social or environmental challenges.

One thing we spotted, and I think Everyone’s Environment has helped with, is thinking ‘okay, wherever we’re doing social work, where are we building in our commitment to environmental sustainability—and when environmental outcomes are the main driver how do we deliver these in a way that also tackles injustice?’

One example of such a project was the way that Groundwork used the government’s Kickstart scheme during Covid-19, employing around 100 young people and focussing on upskilling these individuals in community development and carbon literacy. The approach helped in the development of the subsequent New to Nature programme, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and the resources are still being used to upskill a new generation.

Evolving a funder plus offer at BBC Children in Need (Act)

Using learnings uncovered during their most recent survey of both successful and unsuccessful grant applicants, BBC Children in Need explored both what was currently being done by these charities to address the climate emergency and what further support they needed in this area.

BBC Children in Need recognised that rather than dedicating a portion of their resources to specifically fund charities tackling the social impacts of the environmental crises, they should develop their funder plus support to focus on these issues instead—with a view to providing both information and advice sessions and shared learning forums for applicants and grant holders.

BBC Children in Need are continuing to listen to their grantees and respond. They are planning a series of focus groups to explore how grantees are tackling the social impacts of the environmental crises (wherever they are on their journey), to identify gaps where the funder can provide additional support.