Nature organizations

For planet earth to survive, nature organizations play a crucial role. Environmental research and lobby for new environmental laws form an important part in protecting our planet. Yet, the hardest part seems to be getting local people on board to contribute to protect the environment. Participatory Action Research helps to find the energy within a community to become active in a way that suits their needs, values and culture.

Our vision on how to protect nature using PAR

We believe nature can recover and be protected by involving what we have in abundance on planet earth: people. Not by trying to convince them to join someone else’s project, but by allowing them to co-design projects together, based on their knowledge and shared truth of the situation and their values and needs. Projects they feel ownership of. Projects for which they feel intrinsic responsibility to make it a success. Projects that directly or indirectly contribute to the goals of the involved nature organization, yet in a way we could not have thought of beforehand.

The Community-up approach

Traditional approaches, where organizations and governments take action based on their own views are often referred to as “Top-down” approaches. A counter movement are the so called “Bottom-up” approaches, where citizens themselves take action. In both cases professionals (“the top”) and citizens (“the bottom”) are not cooperating. SevenSenses founder Madelon Eelderink coined the term “Community-up” to refer to professionals and citizens joining forces and jointly tackling issues. The term Community-up by now has been widely adopted. Participatory Action Research (PAR) allows all stakeholders to view each other’s perspectives and qualities and discover how they can enforce each other. As a result, PAR is an ideal Community-up approach to support people in developing projects that allow nature to thrive in a way that makes people thrive too.

Free virtual brainstorm

Are you curious to hear more about what SevenSenses can do specifically for you? Please don’t hesitate to contact us to arrange a free one-hour virtual brainstorm with us.

“We strongly feel that nature protection should no longer be seen as a trade-off with economic development. PAR lets involved stakeholders discover together how these two reinforce each other rather than be two options to choose from.”

Madelon Eelderink spreker
Madelon Eelderink
Founder of SevenSenses

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