PPN’S RESOURCES

Creating a Local Sustainable Future:
The Importance of a Vision for Community Wellbeing

Webinar – September 15th 2020

A county’s Vision for Community Wellbeing (VCW) acts as a guiding vision for the work of the local Public Participation Network, ensuring that the community’s vision for the future is at the heart of all decisions. This webinar focused on the why of creating a Wellbeing Statement and heard from PPNs who have been through the process about their experience. It aimed to inspire more people to take part in its creation, and showcase some practical applications for a completed VCW. Watch the videos of the session below.

Introduction to the Vision for Community Wellbeing with Harriet Emerson

Harriet Emerson has been facilitating the creation of Wellbeing Visions across Ireland. Here, she summarises what they are and why they are important.

This introduction is useful for PPNs and anyone who is engaging in the Wellbeing process for their county.

Vision for Community Wellbeing – Longford case study

Longford Public Participation Network has successfully completed their Wellbeing Vision process. They have used the finished document for many positive actions since then.

We hear from Siobhan Cronogue, PPN Resource Worker, who shares their PPN’s experience of the process, practicalities and outcomes. We also hear from Tess Murphy and Pozy Green who give their insight from the perspective of PPN Secretariat members.

Q&A with all speakers from the webinar

Michael Ewing, a leading figure in the Irish Environmental Network (IEN) and Environmental Pillar, presents at UCD Earth Institute coffee morning. The IEN is an umbrella network that works to support environmental NGOs through access to funding and services. The Environmental Pillar consists of 32 national independent environmental NGOs working together to represent the views and advocate on behalf of the Irish environmental sector. Michael discusses his work developing community well-being visions. In 2014 Public Participation Networks (PPNs) began to be set up in every city and county in the country. Every community, voluntary, social inclusion, and environmental group in the country is entitled to be a member of their PPN. There are now 14,000 such organisations that are PPN members. Each PPN is required to develop a “Vision for the wellbeing of their community for this and future generations”. This is a global first and is proving to be a revelatory, unifying and empowering process for the communities concerned. Michael identifies the potential connections or conflicts with a proposed new national Wellbeing Index, which is currently being developed.

Creating a Local Sustainable Future:

An introduction to the UN Sustainable Development Goals,

their connection to local environmental sustainability,

and their potential to help us collaborate on diverse issues.

Online workshop series – December 2nd and 9th, 2020

The Global Goals, also known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are a universal plan of action for people and planet to be achieved by the year 2030. These 17 goals aim to end poverty, combat climate change and ensure that we leave peaceful, just and equal societies for future generations.

These workshops were a collaboration between Limerick PPN and the Environmental Pillar. Facilitated by Catherine O’Toole of the IEN, and Davie Phillip of Cultivate, these workshops aimed to impart a deeper understanding of the SDGs and how to use them to develop local work and community projects that support sustainable development.

Workshop 1

Introduction to Sustainable Development Goals: What are they and why use them

Davie Phillip introduces the Sustainable Development Goals and the concept of sustainable development. Catherine O’Toole highlights examples of the SDGs in use in Ireland.

Davie’s slides: 2020_12_2_SDG community partnership – Catherine’s slides: 2020_12_2_SDGs and the Environment, SDGs in Action

Video of presentations with introduction from Catherine Dalton, Limerick PPN Secretariat member

Workshop 2

SDGs – A Closer Look

In this workshop we recapped the insights from last week, and too a closer look at the SDGs by exploring the targets. We also introduced a worksheet that will help groups map their work to the SDGs using the targets.

SDG targets slides: 2020_12_09_Targets presentation – Download SDG Targets worksheet here: SDG targets worksheet

Video presentation introducing the targets and use of worksheet

Group exercises

In each workshop we held group work sessions which introduced exercises to map the SDGs to your local work. The first exercise focused on mapping the SDGs to your own work. The second explored how to use the SDGs as a common language to achieve collaboration between diverse issues and groups, and to expand the conversation to leave no one behind.

A run through of these exercises can be found in the full report for the series here: Creating a Local Sustainable Future using Global Goals_Limerick SDG webinar report.