Well, the biggest group (by organisational status) is charities, who make up a substantial two thirds of all JustAct members, but it's not just the usual suspects. Far from it. We have social enterprises, community groups, not-for-profits, housing associations and faith groups, to name but a few. Our latest member, as of today, is ArcSpace Manchester, welcome...
The diversity of members' work is frankly astonishing, from community support, to the arts, to housing - we even have a member from India. A random selection from the 'F's gives me Friends of the Great Copse & Leigh Park; Fruitful Consulting; and the Furniture Re-use Network (FRN).
Perhaps most interesting thing is the reasons that people have given for joining up:
- "We are concerned for work on environmental issues to be accessible to disabled people and people with long term health conditions." (Self Help Nottingham)
- "To be a positive role model for the communities that we work with, and lead by example." (Groundwork North Northamptonshire)
- "Participating in government and voluntary sector initiatives on the subject, and being seen to do so." (Look Ahead Housing and Care)
- "If we are all going to dream of a solution the third sector is the only place that dreams become reality." (Core)
So, it looks like people believe that what we're doing is important here, and just to prop that up, we've even found academic endorsement: according to the summary of Tschakert and Dietrich's work there is "a dearth of methods and tools to facilitate and sustain... collaborative, iterative, self-organising processes of learning-by-doing." That's exactly what JustAct was set up to do (though we might not have phrased it like that...). So well done us!
Finally, CDF have started an e-bulletin called 'Sustainable Developments' aimed at third sector/ civil society groups who are interested in what everyone else is getting up to around social, environmental and economic sustainability... if you fancy it, follow the link.
Kate
On behalf of the JustAct team
