Our Model of Change and why it will help make real longstanding change
WHAT DO WE WANT TO ACHIEVE WITH OUR PROJECT?
Following the Social Model of Disability, we know that for disabled people to be involved in the green transition will require change at an individual level and at a structural level.
Our proposals aim to influence both of these factors, addressing eco-ableism at the individual and structural level.
Structural Change: Influencing large scale infrastructure delivery that will make green change possible for disabled people at a wide scale, and allow disabled people the agency to make change
Individual Behaviour Change: Co-creating environmentally conscious behaviour changes among disabled people that takes into account the variety of needs and pressures in their lives.
WHAT WILL THIS CHANGE REQUIRE?
We will partner with local government, developers, our regional mayoral authority and the private sector to advocate on behalf of the accessibility needs and ambitions of disabled people.
We will also work with people in our local community, of which the majority will identify as disabled, to enable individual behaviour change around environmentally conscious living. Through a series of co-created workshops and training on energy saving, recycling, diet and other relevant topics - based on work we have done for Energy Savings Trust.
In doing so we will create a ground-up and impactful model of facilitating behaviour change on an individual and regional level around disability inclusion and action in the green economy. We will share the learning from this project nationally at conference events, local government conferences and academic panels.
WHY THIS MODEL OF INTERVENTION? WHY DO WE WANT TO USE RESOURCES IN THIS WAY?
We want to use a model of systems change to make a sustainable and impactful change in green inclusion in the North East. We base the intervention on the ‘inverted pyramid’ model of Harvard Business School’s ‘Water of Systems Change’. We will create a partnership that uses knowledge transfer between highly skilled professionals and local community advocates.
Our project creates flows of resources (expertise, training and cash subsidies) to disabled people in our region so that they might be empowered to influence policies, practices and relationships.
Our project will direct resources to disability groups in the form of:
To democratically influence local power dynamics:
- Cash payments in order to attend and form local steering groups in 5 boroughs of the North East - Sunderland, South Tyneside, North Tyneside, Newcastle, Gateshead. These groups will be empowered to lobby local decision makers over green development plans.
- Bought in expertise in accessible infrastructure design, as training for steering groups and local authorities.
- Bought in expertise in ecology, as training for steering groups and local authorities, in order to influence policy on Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) and to challenge decision making to ensure that BNG credits are spent in places accessible to disabled people
- Bought in expertise in community energy, in order to help map the energy needs of disabled people and Deaf and Disabled People’s organisations in the North East
- Funding for workshops for council staff in Disability Awareness
To generate local level behaviour change:
- Green space auditing: funding for workshops on accessibility for green spaces managed in Sunderland, South Tyneside, North Tyneside, Newcastle, Gateshead
- Green living workshops: Delivered in respective boroughs, based upon the precedent of pilot work done by Energy Savings Trust, we will co-design and deliver workshops on energy saving, recycling and other environmentally conscious living topics to groups in Sunderland, South Tyneside
