The big idea behind Dirt Is Good
"A schools programme to meet the 'Greta' moment.”
That was the pitch invitation to Global Action Plan, from the Dirt is Good team at Unilever Global.
It was 2019. School strikes for climate had begun. However, while the appetite for doing good was clearly growing, barriers to meaningful climate action were still present in young people's lives. Wanting to take action does not necessarily translate into actually taking action. Environmental educators have been grappling with this for decades; the obstacles are multiple. A partnership with Unilever would give us the chance to deep dive into a key barrier, and hopefully remove it.
Unilever's invitation came at a good time for us. Global Action Plan had just finished Goals for Good, a programme that drew from research into positive psychology and sustainability to help young people live happier, healthier, and more planet friendly lifestyles. The programme questioned traditional notions of success, and asked what really makes us happy.
I was new to Global Action Plan and absolutely thrilled to find myself amongst colleagues who 'get' values. It was a dream job for me. It still is.
Insights from Goals for Good around participants’ feelings of meaning and purpose arising from considering the effect of their goals beyond themselves, fed into our planning. This was a time that Global Action Plan was fully embracing the insights coming out of organisations like Common Cause Foundation, PIRC, Lifeworlds Learning, and the New Citizenship Project. All of whom were emphasising the urgent need to be conscious of the values and frames we activate and reinforce through projects, programmes, and communications.
With the Unilever invitation in mind, the Global Action Plan team decided to focus on the values-perception gap (the VPG), which hitherto hadn’t been widely recognised as a barrier to action, but was revealing itself to be a potentially key one.
In 2016, Common Cause Foundation had done a brilliant job of translating the academic research around the VPG into a sector-facing report: 'Perceptions Matter'. What they had uncovered through their own study, and the literature, was a basic and widespread misperception. The research shows that while most people do care about other people and the planet, they also don't feel that the same is true of others.
In short, we think we are surrounded by selfish people, when in fact, we're actually mostly surrounded by compassionate people.
What the Perceptions Matter report also showed was that this misperception, this sense of being one of the few who really cares, is very debilitating. The more you feel alone in being someone who cares, the less likely you are to take pro-environmental behaviours, volunteer on social causes, get involved in the democratic process, or even vote.
The Global Action Plan team wondered whether this values-perception gap exists amongst young people and, if it does, is it something that they're born with, or does it open up as they mature? Hypothesising that it does exist, but only in older young people, we then wondered if we could design a programme to close it and thereby remove this critical barrier to action on bigger-than-self causes like climate change and inequality.
This is what we pitched to Unilever, and they were fascinated by it. We began working in partnership with them and an expert advisory panel to research the VPG and use the findings to underpin the new Dirt Is Good Project programme
Five years on from those initial pitch conversations; four years on from the research we did to prove the VPG does exist in young people (but only appears and takes effect as they get older); and three years on from the launch of the Dirt Is Good Project schools programme, we have unleashed thousands of young people from that feeling of being alone in caring, and given them the tools and confidence to take collective action on a multitude of issues they care about.
It is humbling to see the impact the programme is having on young people, my Tuesday morning visit to 'the good stuff' page of the Dirt Is Good website is always a highlight of my week.
Visit the page to read stories from the UK, Thailand and Chile where young people are putting this work into practice, their case studies are evidence that they are united in compassion with other changemakers who also care about the planet and are also prepared to act for it.
If you’d like to collaborate with us on values-based learning, youth social action, changemaking or tackling excessive consumption, contact [email protected]