We provide financial support to the Sheila McKechnie Foundation

System Concepts is committed to social justice – through our team’s core shared values, by helping our clients to design products, services and working environments which are easily usable by people of all abilities, and through our health and safety services which help prevent people being injured at work.  Many of these issues would not have been addressed without the input of campaigners like Sheila McKechnie,  who helped put health and safety on the corporate agenda, and who ran the Consumers’ Association for many years, campaigning for ease-of-use, quality and reliability improvements in manufactured goods and services.

Following Sheila’s untimely death in 2004 a radical new organisation was set up in her memory to empower and support the next generation of campaigners; people like Sheila who tackle the root causes of injustice and aim to develop innovative solutions for social change. Tanya Heasman, joint MD of System Concepts is one of the founding group of Trustees of the Sheila McKechnie Foundation.

The Foundation’s 3 main aims are to:

• Develop the next generation of campaigners
• Bring together campaigners and influencers for mutual support and shared learning
• Champion the right to campaign.

A key part of the foundation’s work is a bespoke bursary programme that provides access to decision makers, experts and influencers.  Bursaries are awarded annually in 9 different categories across the social justice spectrum.  The winning campaigners in each category receive bespoke packages that include mentoring, shadowing and one-to-one coaching to increase their ability to make an impact with their campaigns.  Gordon Brown recently presented the second annual awards at a reception at Downing Street to campaigners working in areas as diverse as sustainable tourism in the Lake District and conflict resolution in Zimbabwe.  Watch Gordon Brown’s speech to the Awards Reception 2007.

Campaigners and influencers are brought together through national campaign workshops and forums arranged by the Foundation.  They provide an environment for participants to network, share concerns and develop solutions to the collective challenges they face, enabling them to use a broad range of tactics and exploit new methods of securing profile and influence.

The Foundation seeks to influence developments that impact on all campaigners and speak on their behalf when to speak themselves might threaten their independence.  It is involved in working groups that challenge the policies which diminish the legal space that campaigners can operate within.

If you would like to find out more about the work of the Foundation or can offer financial support or skills which would help campaigners to be more effective, please visit the Sheila McKechnie Foundation website.