The Natural Step comes of Age with a new Vision – A Message from the Transition Team

Dear Colleagues,

This year The Natural Step is coming of age. We’re celebrating our 21st birthday and are excited to share with you our progress over the last year (see previous news in Stepping Stones Issue 2) to enhance our effectiveness through a new model of engagement and collaboration with all our stakeholders.

What’s in Store?
The Natural Step will continue to act as your trusted source of inspiration, education and support, and a go-to place for news about the application of the framework for strategic sustainable development. Practically-speaking, we are reconfiguring ourselves to achieve greater scale in a number of key ways. We are:  

• Consolidating our collaboration with academia (read more about the launch of the Real Change website).
• Redefining our global advisory capacity as the test-bed for applied research, action learning and inspiration - to help others achieve real change (read more about the latest news from our business and community partners and an update on PROBE, our latest service offering).
• Scaling up our course offerings through The Natural Step Academy (read more about upcoming courses here).
• Providing a better mechanism for people to collaborate with us as service providers.
• Launching a new global membership network for all stakeholders who want to connect with us and each other.

These last points are the key to uniting the movement of researchers, practitioners, municipal and business leaders who work with us. It is a major change for The Natural Step to shift from licensee model to a wider membership model, and it will take time. You can expect more on this as the details develop in the coming year.  In the meantime, here’s a preview describing our new vision:

Our New Vision
Our vision is that the new Natural Step Global Sustainability Network will be a dynamic community that enables system-changing collaboration, to advance real change toward sustainability. It will be an active network of sustainability leaders and champions world-wide who have a shared understanding of sustainability based upon the Natural Step Framework. Connected through shared identity, values, goals, and a common approach to sustainability network members seek support, ideas, inspiration, and motivation from their peers locally and globally. The Network will have a strong presence on every continent and thousands of collaborators worldwide.

Practicalities
Rest assured, we want all our collaborators to be part of the journey and look forward to keeping you up to date as information becomes available.

There are a number of exciting ways we can work together right now

• Give us feedback on our plans by contacting our Transition Team through local offices
• Sign up and distribute our newsletter, Stepping Stones
• Stay connected via social media – we’re on Facebook * Twitter * YouTube * LinkedIn
• Attend our learning programmes, or if there are no events in your area, you can partner with us to convene a course.
• Work with us to define or turbo-charge your sustainability programme (contact your closest office)
• Join the Real Change Research community
• Explore with us corporate sponsorship and partner opportunities (contact David Cook)

Sincerely,

the Transition Team

David Cook, The Natural Step International

Eric Ezechieli, The Natural Step Italy

Kelly Hawke Baxter, The Natural Step Canada

Regina Hauser, The Natural Step US

Renaud Richard, The Natural Step France