Driving Social Inclusion (text version)
Much of Eaga’s reputation, skill set and it’s experience has been built around working with people who are socially excluded, so whether it is from a fuel poverty angle, or whether it is another community aspect, that is a huge part of what Eaga has done and will continue to do. It is one of our core service offerings. The ability to take what we have done and the experience and skills we’ve got and extend it into other areas of communities is somewhere we should think about going.
We understand communities, we understand how you deal with social inclusion, and we understand the different things you can do to improve or to try and address issues of social exclusion. So we have all the skill sets, we have all the experience and we have most importantly this understanding of what people in communities need and how you work with communities and individuals within them to actually make a difference. For me it’s just a logical extension from all the other social justice programmes we have been involved in.
Sustainability is at the core of dealing with social exclusion so it is no good creating temporary jobs for three months, six months or twelve months, as while it has a lift to the individual and indeed to the place they live in, it isn’t going to make a real difference over a period of time, so sustainability sits at the heart of every solution around dealing with disadvantaged and deprived communities, so that is a given in that sense.
What Eaga can offer and what I think makes us terribly different to the other players in the marketplace, is this understanding of green jobs and while we can’t create all those jobs ourselves what we can do is influence the green space to draw together and pull together new jobs and opportunities in that space so putting solar PV (solar photovoltaic) in people’s roofs as an example, you can’t do that all in a couple of years, that is going to take five to ten years to do, so you are immediately creating sustainability in those areas and that will apply to all the other technologies and micro generation and different opportunities there are, so the green space is almost per-se a sustainable working or job opportunity.
Finding solutions to the problems around social exclusion and getting people into work can only be done in partnership, no one organisation can solve those problems, one organisation can’t solve it by creating jobs, nor can one organisation solve it by managing or administering the process, so you have to get lots of partners and people involved and that needs to be the third sector as well as the private sector, it needs to be Local Authorities, it needs to be not for profit organisations, such as RSLs (Registered Social Landlords) but specific community based organisations who understand the communities and can make contact with these people. One of the big issues around unemployment and indeed worklessness is actually getting to the people who most need the support and help and there is a journey for those people from being completely disinterested and not wanting to work, to getting them to a point where they can go along to an interview and have a chance of getting that work, and there is a whole skillset you have to provide on the way, so this is a journey that can only be achieved with other people, no one organisation could do that. What I think Eaga is very good at is creating good supply chains and working with people and in particular respecting the different contributions different organisations can make and only in that way do I think you have a real chance of solving the whole issue of unemployment, worklessness and social exclusion.