Empowering passionate and committed individuals to take action

In their latest evaluation of Golden Key, the University of the West of England identified eight enablers of system change. One of these enablers is “passionate and committed individuals who are empowered to take action”.  

One such individual is Temba Mahari, an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Second Step. Temba is also a system change champion. He took part in our systems thinking training run by the Schumacher Institute which includes our recommended approach to systems change: action experiments - more details about this can be found in our practical guide to system change. 

Temba has been developing a new way to carry out Equality Impact Assessments. The changes he has introduced to the process mean they are carried out for each client rather than for each service. This change has encouraged reflection, and enabled practitioners to ensure a more holistic view is taken of clients identities. This ensures a wide range of potential inequalities are considered during the assessment that is driven by the client’s individual situation, rather than focusing on protected characteristics. 

He is driven by a desire to ensure the service is as beneficial to the client as possible and is passionate about systems change thinking. He speaks about how Golden Key have supported him to understand systems change theory, and how the Spark Team have provided an important sounding board in the process of turning this theory into action. His iterative approach and small actions have had a wide impact. 

Please watch his interview below where he explains his system change work in more details.