Method
Estimated reading time 3 min

Catalyse action: Engagement model for organisations

How can more people become involved in climate action? Engage civil society groups, NGOs, sport clubs, choirs or any form of community group to inspire individuals to adopt a sustainable lifestyle.

Writer

Salla Nurminen

Specialist, Sustainable Everyday Life

Published

This engagement model for organisations, or what we call the Globe League, was created as a development programme for a wide variety of non-profit organisations and associations, whether large or small, national or local, from sports clubs to knitting circles. It sought and developed new ways to inspire Finns to make environmentally friendly choices in their daily lives.

The Globe League brought together the impact of organisations and sustainable everyday actions. The aim was to find excellent concepts, events, campaigns and services that would help people live a sustainable everyday life.

The non-profit organisations developed ideas for new ways to inspire people that they applied to the programme. The goal of the programme was to develop these initial ideas into concepts that could be tested out with a target group. The concepts inspired people to make sustainable everyday choices that reduce their carbon footprints and save natural resources in their daily activities.

Payoffs

  1. By engaging communities and other actors, your message’s reach is maximised.
  2. Often, we tend to act in our own bubbles. This is the chance to get out of those bubbles and reach people in all kinds of places and situations; for example highlighting ecological aspects at football matches might surprise fans in a nice way.
  3. In this way, social norms are changed effectively.

Results – Finland

  • The Globe League was a success in Finland. Many teams’ projects were featured on national news bulletins and many articles were written about the projects.
  • The winning team, Eetti (an NGO promoting the use of ethical products), is still running their programme #lempivaatteni (#myfavoriteclothing).

What’s needed?

You need a clear challenge for the organisations to tackle. For example: we challenge non-profit organisations, associations and clubs to develop a solution that will inspire and activate people to take environmentally friendly action in their daily lives. Decide the tone of your own Globe League: do you want it to be a safe place in which to develop engagement skills or do you want it to be more like a competition? If you want to go with the competition aspect, then you must clearly state the criteria upon which you will be grading the solutions.

Whatever the solution, it should aim to be a concept that:

  • inspires people to reduce their own carbon footprint;
  • is innovative and offers new ways to encourage people to take climate-friendly action;
  • is repeatable, which means that someone else can start to use the solution or modify it for their own use;
  • affects as many people as possible.

 

Download the method as a pdf version: Catalyse action: Engagement model for organisations (pdf)

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