The individual stories listed here are to demonstrate that there is no single path to a career in sustainability, and the fact that roles, positions, focuses and motivations all change throughout a career.
They also demonstrate the diverse roles and opportunities available in the field of sustainability.
Steven Hunt, International Energy Coordinator, Practical Action
Four years after graduating from the University of Glasgow in Product Design Engineering, Steven left his job with a technology development company for a placement with EWB-UK on Slum Networking at the Alang Shipbreaking Yards in India. Shortly afterwards, he also did a part-time placement with Shelter Centre in Cambridge looking at emergency shelter, which led on to a job in small wind turbines with XCO2.
A year later, Steven started a Masters in Engineering for Sustainable Development at Cambridge. At the same time joined the National Executive of EWB- UK, establishing the Professional Network as a community of professionals, academics and practitioners. Steven soon got a job as an energy specialist for Practical Action Consulting focusing on energy access in developing countries around the world – from cook stoves to treadle pumps, from Madagascar to Azerbaijan.
Steven also served as a trustee of EWB-UK for two years during which time he established a series of collaborations with Practical Action, including a partnership on a series of placements for EWB-UK members. It has been a great success, with volunteers making great and diverse contributions to Practical Action while gaining experience of working in development. He’s also been involved with providing briefs for the Research Programme and is a speaker for the Training Programme.
Steven has taken up the role of international energy co-ordinator at Practical Action, and is also currently seconded part time to the UK Department for International Development as Energy Advisor. At DFID, Steven is developing a new results-based incentive system to accelerate off-grid energy markets for products accessible to poor people in developing countries – hopefully creating the incentives for more innovators and entrepreneurs to apply themselves to the issue of energy poverty.
Kath Pasteur, currently initiating a community woodland
As a child I was never quite sure what I wanted to “do when I grew up”. When asked by a friend of my mums aged about 10, apparently I said I wanted to be a gypsy! By the time I got to 18 that career choice wasn't going to impress the parents so I applied to university to study psychology. I took a year out first to see a bit of the world and during that year I had the opportunity to go to Uganda for a month. I couldn't get over how green and lush the country was! My images of Africa were based on the Band Aid video during the Sahel famine in the mid-1980s, i.e. desert and hungry people. This didn't quite add up.
I went home wanting to study agriculture but didn't think I would get on a course without a science A level, so I switched to a geography degree which had a focus on developing country agriculture and global political economy. I didn't feel qualified enough with just a bachelor’s degree so I went straight on to do an MSc in Rural Resources and Environmental Policy at what was Wye Agricultural College in Kent (now sadly closed down). During that course I heard about an opportunity to apply for a grant to work as a research assistant in Mexico. I obviously needed some overseas experience to get into the world of international development so I found a position doing a study of beekeeping and its role in the farming household economy in Yucatan. Not knowing anything about beekeeping nor being able to speak much more than pigeon Spanish, this was certainly a learning experience! I came home two and a half years later with fluent Spanish and knowing a lot more about rural livelihoods and honey production!
I fell straight into a 5 month Research Assistant job at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), at the University of Sussex and ended up staying there for 9 years! Mainly I worked on “Sustainable Livelihoods” i.e. promoting a more diversified and integrated approach to supporting the livelihoods of the rural poor. During those years I felt more and more uncomfortable about the un-sustainability of our livelihoods in the north, and saw that change in the policies of developed countries was far more valuable than “aid” to the south. I started doing a lot of voluntary campaigning with the World Development Movement and made more efforts to green up my own lifestyle (not flying unless for work, buying local food, home composting, etc.).
Though I loved living in Brighton, I never felt at home in an academic environment so I finally moved on from IDS and got a job with the charity Practical Action based just outside Rugby. This job involved supporting the international offices to develop and manage projects on livelihoods issues, food security, disaster risk reduction and climate change. I really liked Practical Action's approach which is to strengthen and improve local technologies and skills. So particularly on food issues, we didn't push new seeds and fertilizers, but rather revived local seed diversity and traditional soil and water conservation methods, which are more appropriate to the fragile environments where we were working.
When I joined Practical Action I moved to Leamington Spa and got involved in a local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project which produced vegetables for around 120 households. I kept up campaigning through going to the annual Climate Camps and got involved in the local Transition Town initiative. Through doing campaigning at festivals I also got to know people who were living in intentional eco-communities in Somerset and Devon. I started to feel somewhat troubled by being paid a lot to reduce poverty, and flying around the world to work on climate change. I wanted to get out of the office, live more simply and work out what I believed life was about. So after 4 years with Practical Action I simply handed in my notice...
I had some savings so I spent about a year living very cheaply, and doing the things I didn't have time to do when I was working including a 10 day silent meditation course, reading books, helping more at the CSA, learning to draw, taking a campervan trip round Scotland, working at eco-communities like Tinkers Bubble, and spending the summer working at festivals with the “Tin Village” (promoting low impact living). It was great: I loved being outdoors, I loved the freedom to manage my own time, and I loved learning new practical skills. More than anything I valued having the time to think about what I believed in both spiritually and about sustainability. My conclusion was that there are no definitive answers - we should each work out what they mean for ourselves. We need to be informed about the world to make and reassess those judgements, so there is an important role in exchanging and exploring ideas and beliefs (rather than harping on at people about what they should or shouldn't do!). We should be the change we want to see, and hopefully that in it will encourage others to think.
As winter drew in I realised I needed to work again if I was going to keep paying the bills in Leamington. So I put feelers out about freelance work. It was a struggle at first but I trusted that something would come up and sure enough a dream opportunity came my way: a job setting up a community woodland on a derelict site in Leamington. Its only one day a week, so I supplement that with occasional international development consultancy jobs, continue to live cheaply, and take regular trips in my campervan, to satisfy the gypsy spirit in me.
James Curry, Director of a Spanish Renewable Energy Company
In the last year of my undergraduate degree in English Literature and Cultural History, I became increasingly interested in politics. Having grown up in a suburb of London that had been witness to a large anti roads protest, the M11 link road campaign, I began to gravitate to environmental activism. Mid-way through my final year I became involved in the Camp for Climate Action. By the end of my degree I felt that my humanities degree was an opportunity to further my knowledge and understanding about the world, and that now it important to test these ideas through practical applications. Having finished my degree I then took a 9 week course in Sustainable Land Use with Permaculture teacher Patrick Whitefield. This was an important course for me as it helped me develop a holistic, land based approach to sustainability and personal autonomy.
At the Camp for Climate Action at Drax power station I met an engineer offering to teach a wind turbine building course. With funding from the Workers Education Association I organised a week long course in the construction of 2.4m, 500w axial flux wind turbine, at an arts centre in East London, the 491 gallery. Organising the course was a big leap beyond anything that I had done before, having very little practical skills or knowledge, but I felt particularly empowered by the experience of non-hierarchical organisation at the Climate Camp that summer. I also understood the importance of skilling up in order to challenge capitalism and protect the planet. The course fostered a small group wanting to build more wind turbines, and I subsequently built another two; the first for an ecological community in the South West of England, and the second for the London neighbourhood of the Camp for Climate Action, in Heathrow.
Having now built three wind turbines I realised that I needed to undergo some further technical training and started an Msc in Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies at the Centre for Alternative Technology, in Wales. Having previously studied a humanities degree, it was a difficult transition to a science based masters but I persevered.
At the second Climate Camp I met members of V3 Power, a Nottingham based workers cooperative. They invited me to help teach a course building wind turbines, which offered me the opportunity to work with qualified engineers. This experience was invaluable for learning practical skills and gaining general engineering knowledge.
Following on from my experience with V3 and my Masters, I then took up a job with the Spanish based, British charity, Sunseed Desert Technology. I worked as their Appropriate Technology coordinator, maintaining their electrical off grid renewable systems, solar hot water, wood burning masonry stoves and a hydraulic ram pump. I have stayed on in the area and I now run a company installing off grid renewable energy systems.
“Sustainability for me is a quest for personal empowerment through the grass roots provision of food, energy, clean water, housing etc. From the very small, like saving seeds, to the very large, building one’s own house, anything that we can do that helps us to empower the commonality through harmony with nature bring us closer to this goal, no matter how small.
To end with a quote: "I am only one. I can only do what one can do. But what one can do, I will do!" Happy grub-grabbing! (Better than money grabbing any day!) - John Seymour (The new complete book of self-sufficiency)
Ellie Griffiths, Trustee, EWB-UK
Ellie Griffiths is currently a Mechanical Engineer with the architectural and engineering practice, Arup Associates. She previously studied for her mechanical engineering masters at Nottingham University. Ellie became involved in Engineers Without Borders UK through her University branch, she later became branch President and ran numerous activities including workshops, projects and outreach programs.
Ellie went on an EWB placement while at university, to work on the implementation of improved cookstoves in rural India. She established strong relationships during her trip which lead to a collaboration for her her final year project, based on cookstove technology, research and design. She followed up this work with a further trip to India to work with the social enterprise for 3 months. Within EWB she is currently working with the placements and branch support teams.
Ellie’s main interests and passions are in sustainability in human development and climate, which are both conflicting and congruent with an unhealthy love for travel.