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MAINTENANT Sustaining Now: empowering people by giving them the ‘why’ of sustainability

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For its work promoting education around sustainable development, MAINTENANT Sustaining Now picked up a win in the Community Impact category at the 2021 Franco-British Business Awards

MAINTENANT Sustaining Now is a Community Interest Company (CIC) providing educational resources, workshops and training to schools, higher education, and businesses to encourage a transition towards sustainable mindsets. It now works in partnership with several companies on both side of the channel including PwC, RSA Insurance and National Geographic. 

The company was established in 2017 by Amell Amatino, a former digital transformation consultant with a background in quantum physics and a longstanding interest in the environment and sustainability. A newspaper article about government plans to drop the climate debate from school syllabi motivated Amatino to set up MAINTENANT Sustaining Now. 

When she came to educate her own children about the climate, biodiversity, and healthy living, Amatino came to realise that children were not given the keys to understanding our planet and measuring the impact of our choices on society and the environment. 

“The message I want to convey is that to improve our wellbeing and preserve our civilisations, we must protect nature,” she says.  

A solution-focused framework 

MAINTENANT has developed its own educational methodology, EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE EDUCATION. In Amatino’s opinion, “giving people the ‘why’ is more effective than giving them the ‘what’: that is, to find solutions and to fix what we have damaged, we first need to understand why it is broken.” 

The innovative holistic approach achieves this in a playful way by representing our planet as a series of strongly interconnected spheres. “A doctor studying the human body will divide it into different organs,” says Amatino. “We do the same thing with Planet Earth: we divide it into different components, and we explore them one by one, including how human activities impact our world”.

 

 

The methodology places emphasis on Earth being “a dynamic planet in constant evolution where the global energy balance must be preserved for our societies to thrive”.

Phenomena like biodiversity collapse, flooding, storms, rising food prices, and even the COVID-19 pandemic can thus all be traced back to one root: disruption to the balance of Earth System.

Corporate training: putting the COP26 commitment into action 

MAINTENANT is now focusing on bringing knowledge about sustainability to the corporate world.

At the COP26 summit in November 2021, a joint declaration from education ministers around the world included a commitment to “the integration of sustainability and climate change in professional training” asone of their top priorities.

MAINTENANT has been putting the COP26 commitments into practice through its consultancy branch, the SUSTAINABILITY INSTITUTE, which offers a combination of expertise and transformative courses to set the path for a successful future by helping companies to move towards embedding sustainability and circular economy within company culture and business models.   

“Often, people have taken the first steps but don’t always know how to go further,” Amatino says. “Our integrated programme enables top executives to strengthen their sustainability strategies and empowers employees to engage fully with these.” 

Future development: increasing impact further  

Going forward, MAINTENTANT hopes to develop its engagement on an international level to increase its impact. 

Through a series of partnerships, the SUSTAINABILITY INSTITUTE has already been supplying French corporate clients with its circular economy and sustainability professional training. Amell also hopes to open a French office by the end of the year – and is also in talks about expanding MAINTENANT’s outreach even further afield. 

“The Great Resignation, a phenomenon that has manifested itself globally during the pandemic, has shown us millions of cases of employees re-evaluating their lifestyle: they want to work for a company with a purpose. That’s another reason why it’s so important for businesses to move beyond CSR and actually adopt concrete sustainability strategies and circular business models,” says Amatino. 

MAINTENANT Sustaining Now is a Community Interest Company with the social purpose of empowering communities, businesses & governments to develop & maximise their sustainable achievements. MAINTENANT offers a variety of sustainability games, workshops, consultancy services and e-learning courses.

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