Empowering Citizens for Sustainable Social Change

Engaging and empowering citizens
A route to social change
for sustainable development
Global Action Plan International 2015 | globalactionplan.com | secretariat@globalactionplan.com

Global Action Plan
We design and deliver effective programs
• Empowering individuals
• Engaging citizens and employees
• Bringing about long-term, sustainable change

WHAT, HOW, WHY
What?
Social change leading to
resource savings and social cohesion
How?
Scientific, evidence-based design
Empowerment of people and groups
Why?
SDGs, Paris Climate Agreement, more…

WHAT
Resource savings
Typical measured long-term reductions in use of
• Electricity 10 %
• Mobility (fuel) 20 %
• Water 19 %
• Solid waste disposal 50 %
…and next, Food

WHAT
Resource savings
…and next, Food Action, coming in 2017

Social cohesion
Community development built on proven
principles for stakeholder-driven processes.
Examples:
• Ballymun, Ireland
• Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine
• Hanoi, Vietnam
WHAT

WHAT: City example 1
Ballymun, Ireland
Possibly this century’s largest slum regeneration
project in Europe with a low-income, low-
education, high drop-out profile.
GAP has supplied methods, materials and staff to
engage citizens over more than a decade.
=> Result: a vibrant community with the original
residents still there, and thriving

Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine
A national school program engaging more than
100,000 pupils and their families in GAP-
designed Lessons for Sustainable Development
=> has led to a ’sustainable’ household and
neighbourhood program in cooperation with the
social services, city hall, utilities, and local NGOs

Hanoi, Vietnam
A household ’Green Living’ program
=> led to ’Green Teams’ in specific
neighbourhoods, each with self-defined
projects, such as reclaiming a huge river-bank
area from crime and pollution for social and
urban-agricultural activities

HOW
Scientific and evidence-based program design
focusing on individual and group empowerment
yields long-term results and a high RoI
Examples:
• Health care employees, UK
• Activate, Basque Country, Spain

An action research program
starting with a European meeting in 1996
* funded by the Swedish EPA
* of researchers & practitioners in
EMPOWERMENT
Current state embodied in the book ESD
Dialogues, Mehlmann & Pometun, 2013
HOW: The science 1

HOW: The science 1
The action research has resulted in
guidelines embodied in educational programs
• Empowering writing: online course
• Design of effective social change programs:
training program, including data collection
• Empowering coaching: training program
• On-the-job learning from experience: training
and facilitation

Design of effective social change programs
builds on an ‘empowerment spiral’ + social diffusion:
invite to experiment, engage early adopters, start
from participants’ own concerns… and collect data
through ‘before&after’ monitoring systems.
HOW: The science 1

HOW: The science 1
On-the-job learning from experience
Beyond SWOT analysis, Learning for Change creates
a space to build on strengths: “What are you most
proud of?”, and
accelerate
learning. Taught
in more than
40 countries.

HOW: The science 2
Academic research
including
• Longitudinal study of household behaviour
change, Leiden, Netherlands
• Research published by other universities i.a.
in London (UK), Hanoi (Vietnam), Gävle
(Sweden)

HOW: The science 2
Longitudinal study , Netherlands
The Leiden studies of the EcoTeam program, over a
period of years, show that
• Participating households make many changes to
save resources
• The changes are not only sustained but amplified
over time

HOW: The evidence 1
Health care employees, UK
A partnership between GAP UK, Barts Health NHS
Trust and two businesses to engage employees
nation-wide in innovation for more sustainable
health care:
environmental, social and economic
Savings to date: £9.2M and 48,511 tonnes of CO2

HOW: The evidence 2
Activate, Basque Country, Spain
73 municipalities, 42 schools engaged, 1,408
households registered. Focus on electricity, with
monitored savings
High local media impact, important contribution to
Local Agenda 21
3-year budget: only € 189,000

WHY
Social sustainability goes mainstream
– for instance:
• ‘Agenda 21’ becomes Agenda 2030:
SDGs adopted September 2015
• Paris Climate Agreement signed 22 April 2016
• New national, regional and interregional goals
concerning social, environmental and
economic development

WHY work with us?
Based on
• 26 years of experience in 25 countries
• two decades of action research
• research from numerous universities:
GAP has methods and tools
to meet the new urban challenges 

A global leader in sustainable
behaviour change

Empowering Citizens for Sustainable Social Change

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