Award winner case studies

Read more about how an SMK Award has helped new, emerging or inexperienced campaigners to develop their skills. 

Ben Watson: London Social Justice Award winner, 2008

In 2008 Ben won the London Social Justice Award for his work at FairPensions, the campaign for Responsible Investment. The campaign aims to alleviate the environmental damage, human rights violations and damage to people’s living and working conditions caused by the activities of multinational corporations. The campaign targets pension funds and fund managers who own trillions of pounds worth of shares in massive corporations; and aims to get these large investors to intervene in companies that have been (for example) fuelling climate change, evicting indigenous peoples from their lands, or aiming to restrict the availability of cheap retroviral drugs in Sub-Saharan Africa..

At the time he won the award Ben was employed as a Campaigns Assistant by FairPensions, but felt that he needed general support in making his campaigning skills more effective, as well as learning from the experiences of other campaigners.

“I wanted to develop partnerships and learn from other campaigners who had worked at small but impactful campaigning groups. SMK connected me with experienced, effective campaigners from small, medium-sized and large NGOs, and provided me with excellent support in developing my campaigning skills”

Ben was impressed by the support offered by SMK highlighting the fact that this type of support is not available elsewhere to individual campaigners.

“SMK provides unique support to grassroots campaigners. While larger charities can provide some level of institutional support to their teams, nowhere else is there the kind of support that SMK offers: catering to individuals who are at the core of what their campaigning group does. When you are one of a small team who has to sustain the campaign from day to day, acting as a jack of all trades and dabbling in all areas of campaigning, it can be hard to take a step back and see the big picture. The support SMK offers lets you do that.”

Ben identified one of the main benefits of the support that he received from the awards package as developing the skills needed to run a campaign - being able to plan, manage and deliver a campaign efficiently. 

The support package that Ben received included getting access to politicians and people with influence that Ben feels he would not have been able to meet without the support of SMK. This in turn helped him build his confidence when meeting with people in authority.

“It definitely increased my confidence; I was talking to senior politicians and decision makers at all levels, and I found I was really able to get my point across.”

A further benefit to winning the award and attending the workshops is that Ben feels it has enhanced his career prospects.

FairPensions continues to campaign on investment issues, but in July 2009 Ben left to join the Policy Studies Institute at the University of Westminster. He is currently working on several different projects that cut across many different areas. These include the Green Fiscal Commission (which models the impact of a ‘green tax shift’ in the UK), the Sustainable Development Research Network, and the Maiden Lane ‘Food Loop’ project, which will use action-based research to assess and improve how community recycling projects are implemented and used to encourage pro-environmental behaviour.

Debbie Crew: Consumer Action Award winner, 2007

Debbie won the 2007 Consumer Action Award for her work campaigning against retaliatory evictions by private landlords. At the time of her award Debbie was a policy officer at Crosby, Formby and District Citizens Advice Bureau. Under current housing law, a private landlord can issue two months notice for any reason they choose, it cannot be defended or challenges. Debbie’s campaign argued that fear of eviction is enough for people not to seek help, even if they are living in unsuitable or unsafe homes. Her campaign argued that local authorities should be obliged to take a greater role in preventing homelessness. Debbie felt that winning the award from SMK gave her the opportunity to get her message across to a much wider audience and to a greater extent than she would have been able to otherwise.

"The situation made me angry. The local authorities accepted the situation and I wanted to start challenging it. . . My report got great publicity and I got invited to speak at congresses and conferences. There was an added kudos to what I was campaigning about."

Part of the award package that Debbie received was being given the opportunity to shadow the then Housing Minister Yvette Cooper for a day. This gave her access to a person of influence and an opportunity to further promote her campaign within government.

“I got to spend the day with Yvette Cooper as part of the award and I got her to look at my report, it was useful to have the housing minister’s ear.”

The award was presented by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Debbie feels that this also gave her campaign a level of validation that it would not have ordinarily had.

“The landlord lobby got freaked out because they thought I had the ear of the Prime Minister.”
 
Along with the opportunities to promote her campaign more widely, the main benefit that Debbie feels she gained from winning the award was the increase in self confidence that followed.

“I was terrified of public speaking but after getting the award my confidence went sky high....SMK believed in me – just going to the interview for the award made me think ‘I loved that interview, they were interested’ and it made me think I was right to be campaigning about this.”

The award package included coaching sessions from an experienced mentor. Debbie felt that this element of the award was extremely useful and she found her coach to be supportive not only in terms of her campaign but also on a personal level. Following the award Debbie has moved onto a different job, she believes that her experience with SMK and the support that she received from the award package improved not only her career prospects but also her view of herself and gave her the confidence to apply for jobs that she would have previously thought out of her grasp.

“I have gained so much, I went for an interview for a job that paid a much higher salary and it is good to be in the position where I was confident enough to do that.”

Since the award in 2007, Debbie’s campaign has reached a hiatus and she is currently looking at other ways to bring about changes in the private housing sector. She is now considering setting up an on-line campaign community for grassroots campaigners and tenants giving them information on their rights.

The main impact that the award winners support package had for Debbie was the increase in her confidence and self-belief. She also recognised the importance of the access to key stakeholders and other power brokers that work with SMK facilitated that was particularly beneficial to her campaign.

Shane Lunga: Economic Justice Award winner, 2006

In 2004 Shane formed Zimbabwe Futures to campaign for the policies necessary to rebuild Zimbabwe and win UK Government support for the level of investment that is required for the reconstruction of his country - www.zimbabwefutures.com The emergence of dictatorship in Zimbabwe has led to the destruction of the country's largest industry and hyperinflation. Economic collapse has taken place at a time when Zimbabwe is reeling from the social impact of AIDS - a quarter of the adult population are believed to be HIV positive.

The country's middle class has deserted Zimbabwe in droves and the remaining population exist in conditions of grinding poverty. Zimbabwe Futures key policy priority is the repatriation of skills to Zimbabwe. The campaign wants to see UK minister introduce incentive measures that will encourage health care professionals to return to Zimbabwe for short term periods in order to restore health services. In 2004 Zimbabwe Future secured the Department of International Development's funding for a research study that investigated the factors that would encourage Zimbabweans to return home in a reconstruction scenario.

Shane has been accelerating his campaign since the awards ceremony in March 2006. Zimbabwe Futures focus throughout the year has been to build alliances with other Zimbabwean organisations in order to raise the profile of the organisation's objectives. This year Zimbabwe Futures has also sought to engage more systematically with decision makers.

Shane met a group of parliamentarians in June 2006 to brief them on the key issues relating to Zimbabwean reconstruction. We arranged for him to meet the International Development Secretary, Hilary Benn in early September. During his meeting with Mr. Benn Shane lobbied him on the need for Zimbabwean doctors and nurses based in the NHS to have the right to be released for temporary periods to do work to improve health services in Zimbabwe.

In mid September 2007, at the first major international conference on reconstruction, Shane spoke alongside leaders of the opposition movement in the country about the policies required to bring back lost skills to Zimbabwe.

Shane has also been coached by Mike Holdgate of The Scarman Trust about how he can recruit new volunteers. Mike did development work at a grassroots level in Zimbabwe and has a good understanding of the problems faced by Zimbabweans who have settled in Britain. Shane commented on his coaching:
"The coaching has been a great help exploring solutions to challenges, especially on areas that will progress my agenda".

He has also had a session with Sacha Deshmukh at the public affairs organisation AS Biss & Co on how Zimbabwe Futures should present itself in meetings with ministers and parliamentarians.

Jackie Schneider: Consumer Action Award winner, 2006

Jackie Schneider established Merton Parents for Better Food In School.

Jackie is a teacher and a parent. She therefore had first hand experience of the poor quality of school meals in Merton, South London. She took the initiative to establish a campaign to ensure that all Merton pupils are offer well prepared nutritious and appealing school meals.

Her campaign begun with a single email to Felicity Lawrence at The Guardian newspaper and gathered tremendous momentum after the newspaper featured an article about school meal provision in Merton on its front page. Jackie fully capitalised on the extensive media interest generated by this initial article and formed a campaign group.

Her campaign collected a wide body of evidence to use in council meetings and consulted widely amongst parents, securing 3,000 signatures on a petition. She developed a website and secured local and national publicity. This included Daily Mirror coverage and a centre page spread in the Sunday Express. An archive of her media coverage can be found on the campaign website.

Initially, Merton Council refused to acknowledge her campaign's concerns and argued that school meals were healthy and nutritious. However in due course the Council were taken aback by the professionalism and verve of the campaign. The local authority did a U'turn and accepted that meals were substandard and appointed an industry expert to develop a school meal improvement plan.

The support programme has focused on helping Jackie consolidate the success of her campaign. We have sought to help her strengthen her campaign group so they are able to monitor the implementation of new local school meals standards.

Jackie like all our winners has had a series of one-to-one coaching sessions. Jackie's sessions have focused on how she can spread responsibilities across her team and how she can recruit volunteers.
We arranged for her to receive advice on the impact of the Private Finance Initiative on school meals contracts from the former head of the NUPE trade union, Rodney Bickerstaffe.

Jackie also had a very useful session on how to use the Freedom of Information Act to campaign on food issues.

Jackie commented on the awards:
"I would urge anyone who has tried to make improvements or changes to apply. There are lots of people out there who probably don't even consider themselves campaigners, but by their actions are working to make the world a better place. If you are a 'doer' rather than a moaner you are a campaigner! I would urge you to apply for an award because it will help you achieve your aims.
Winning the award has had a huge impact on our campaign. It has opened doors for us, given us access to a wealth of information and given us lots of credibility. The training programme has given me the confidence to aim higher".