Supporting social science champions – a new opportunity with Human Nature

Are you the one always championing social science in your organisation?

Maybe you have some support from a manager or interested colleagues.  But it’s usually you chiming up in meetings saying “shall we think about human behaviour?” or “do we need to understand what the community thinks about this?”

Do you spend a lot of energy making the case for social science?  Explaining that people are as important in conservation as plants and animals, that text-based data is actually data, and that yes, human ethics are important.

You’re doing this because you can see that if your team, project or organisation better utilised social science, you would all have a better chance of achieving your conservation objectives.

I’ve been where you are – flying the flag for social science as core business for conservation, responding to sceptics and repeatedly making the case.  Having established social science as a permanent component of the science department of a large conservation NGO, I know that your determination is worth the effort.

And now I work with people just like you, who share your vision for more inclusive and holistic conservation that routinely considers evidence beyond the ecological.

A person I’ve worked with previously said that working with me to develop a tailored social science strategy gave social science more credibility in their organisation – something that they had strived for for years.  Another described the mentoring calls I provide as critical for protecting the valuable space to think and bounce ideas around.

I know that leading organisational change can be lonely.  And that change can be slow. It can take years or decades to feel like social science evidence is on the table in anything like the same way as ecological evidence.

But let’s be honest.  Conservation does not have decades to get comfortable with social science evidence.

Based on my experiences supporting individuals and conservation organisations to embrace social sciences, I’ve put together the Catalysts Programme to help you reach your goals sooner.  The programme will provide you with support and training to develop a tailor-made plan so that your organisation can accelerate its use of social science evidence.

The new eight-month Catalysts Programme is a springboard for your organisation to rapidly increase its use of conservation social science, enabling it to benefit from insights into the stakeholders and communities you work with, and increase its impacts.

The programme is accessed entirely online and starts in March.  If you want to know more about what’s involved drop me an email at rebecca@humannature.co.uk and we can explore if it’s right for you.