Fircroft College of Adult Education

Green Changemakers

Green Changemakers is a training programme, an open and flourishing ‘Adventure Ready Squad’, a community and a movement. We are attempting a paradigm shift in education’s mindset and practice, which reframes ‘impact’ as long-term, collective and sustainable change and which mobilises a different kind of power – potentia, or changemaking influence, knowledge, skills and behaviours.

Taking as our starting point AimHi Earth’s ’15 Green Skills’ and using Thinking Environment principles to ensure democratic participation, we taught educators and their colleagues from across further education (FE) how to be Green Changemakers (GCs), through developing their confidence, influence, knowledge, and skills.

This counter-cultural approach to professional development gives everyone both a changemaking role and a rationale for personal accountability, moving organisations from good intentions to sustainable change.

Currently 40 GCs have undertaken the programme, from 18 institutions. Whilst each organisation has its own pace of change, impact is already being documented.

Top 3 Learnings

1. We can empower educators as Changemakers, so they develop subject-specific Green Skills expertise for themselves.
2. Training people as green changemakers effectively addresses issues of momentum for change in Further Education.
3. An agile (WhatsApp) community of changemakers is essential to maximise the impact of the work.