Trewin's Blog

Breaking out of the Muesli Belt

Nas Diiriye is a 17 year old from the Tulse Hill estate in South London who is currently interning with Global Action Plan. We took him and a group of three others from the same estate to listen to Ed Miliband talk about the riots. None of them knew who Ed Miliband was and went with the attitude that politicians had nothing to offer them. 

Having listened to Ed Miliband, Nas raised his hand and gave his opinion.  He said:
"Young people are not educated and guided enough to see the bigger picture. They lack good role models in their communities and media often overpower their delicate minds. Young people automatically assume that the fast life is the way forward as they can make money, earn status and gain respect in a short time." 

When the event ended there was a media frenzy around Nas and his colleagues as journalists recognised an ‘authentic voice’ from the frontline. At the end of the day they came back to the office buzzing having appeared on Channel 4 News, BBC World Service, Sky News and in The Independent.

Working with Nas and four other interns has been difficult for Global Action Plan. Like virtually all of the environment movement our employees are predominantly white and middle-class. The arrival of a group from a completely different and challenging background who need a considerable amount of training, personal support and patience has lead to a lot of internal questioning about whether it is something that we should be doing.

As an environment charity we are driven by the need to achieve significant and rapid cuts in carbon dioxide and this can be best achieved by seeking to engage with high use consumers. It is far harder to measure and understand impact when working in more challenging social settings where environmental benefits are only delivered after trust, confidence and awareness has been built. As a result, staff legitimately wonder whether we should be tackling deeply entrenched social challenges if they may compromise the ability to deliver maximum environmental benefits.

It is an important debate and one that should be taking place in the wider environmental movement. All green groups support the concept of sustainability and will invariably define this as containing the three pillars of society, finance and environment. The question is does the movement just pay lip-service to the social pillar? 

I can completely understand why this happens. It is easy to create a culture where environmental change over-rides all other concerns. All too quickly a form of complacency can be created, reinforced by the fact that all the people around you broadly share your values and all new recruits mirror the existing socio-economic profile of the organisation.

But this complacency needs to be challenged. There are enormous limitations presented by employing such a narrow demographic in engaging effectively with the wider community. The movement must look long and hard at itself and break out of the comfortable ‘muesli-belt’ if it is to truly reflect the views of the wider community.

For Global Action Plan this is a slow and difficult transition and far from being achieved. Our impetus for change came when we started to work with 16-25 year olds. Listening to their views, we learnt that many of the most disadvantaged defined ‘dead-end’ jobs as working in an office. What they wanted was manual work with the opportunity to be upwardly mobile through training and promotion. 

In the current economy this type of work is increasingly hard to find but in a low carbon economy there could be a growing number of these jobs. Furthermore companies are increasingly realising that if employees understand the concept of sustainability their value is enhanced and they are more likely to progress.

Having understood this we decided to become an accredited BTEC training supplier and developed two new courses covering sustainability and work skills. We established new relationships with charities such as Fairbridge and the YMCA who work directly with young NEETs (not in employment, education or training). In a little over a year we trained over 150 young people helping them to run practical environmental projects in their centres.

The five Tulse Hill interns in the office have taken the process a step further. This is a group facing considerable challenges and to be honest there are days when I severely doubt whether we are having a positive impact on their lives. However, these doubts are off-set when I see the transformational benefit provided by us being able to get them to meet Ed Miliband and talk directly to the media.

What our experience and the recent riots have convinced me of is that providing young disadvantaged people with skills and training in sustainability will help them to improve their chances of employment, could improve social mobility, will help them to see the bigger picture and will provide essential life skills. It would be a truly sustainable solution.

The environment movement could have a crucially important role in this process but it is incredibly difficult. Fundamentally the movement needs to go beyond the middle classes and engage with harder to reach groups. If it can do this successfully it will help address wider social issues and have a greater legitimacy with the wider community.

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