How ECP was born
ECP was galvanised into action by Dr Rosalind Napleton-King, to deliver innovative solutions to address acute conservation and animal welfare needs passing ‘under the radar’. ECP is underpinned by a rich blend of experience from varied arenas and inspired by the efforts of remarkable people achieving remarkable things in difficult circumstances around the world – many of them working against fierce odds to aid threatened wildlife and animals in crisis. ECP thinks outside the box for animals – and brings fresh understanding, from efforts that work well, to those in need.
ECP was born from recognition of a pivotal issue fundamentally impacting efforts to save threatened wildlife and animals in crisis. In essence, amidst deep focus to help animals, relatively few were really considering or understanding how to better empower people to do so – and the impact that holistic collaborative endeavour can make. For sure, love of animals alone is not enough to help them. We need to empower people in order to do so – those who work with and for them and those who encounter them daily.
We know, all too acutely, that wildlife face increasingly complex, urgent survival challenges from ever-present threats; loss and degradation of their habitat, over-exploitation due to unsustainable hunting, poaching and harvesting, pollution, invasive species, disease, climate change – and complacency. The situation for animal welfare is similar; age-old practices, societal and financial pressures, lack of education and poor access to veterinary facilities all mean that companion animals and livestock face acute situations the world over.
ECP harnesses optimism and empowered hope to fuel action, advocating the power of a positive approach to address acute issues – one not fuelled by uninformed hope, but informed by real issues, delivering practical, positive solutions. Having repeatedly witnessed extraordinary, wide-ranging, multifaceted, impactful efforts that occur, against many odds, for threatened wildlife and other animals, ECP’s founder and director set out to distil just what was enabling the success of such collaborations, embracing multiple parties from varied national, cultural and sectoral backgrounds.
ECP draws on rich collaborative experience from diverse arenas around the globe. It harnesses leading knowledge of the phenomena that bind certain remarkable collaborative endeavours and fuel their collective action, incentivising and driving conservation efforts on wide-ranging scale, within and across nations, where regardless of differences – cultural, religious, professional, societal or otherwise – neither physical nor non-physical boundaries, nor the backdrop of threats to wildlife, appear to impede.
This innovative approach is vital
ECP is inspired by remarkable collaborative efforts for animals; however, for countless threatened species and critical animal welfare situations, many worthy efforts are isolated. Sometimes, people simply do not know how to easily connect, or how to maximise the potential of collaboration. Often, organisations act in a fragmented way, sometimes in competition with one another. Sometimes people within teams and organisations are competing against, or not helping, each other, despite common goals. The upshot of this disconnected working is that outcomes and impact for threatened species and animal welfare are not maximised. Worse still, some creatures in desperate need have little effort and little collective endeavour on their behalf at all.
Strength in Numbers
The complex, urgent challenges faced by wildlife and many domestic animals demand innovative strategies, extensive exchange of diverse knowledge – and linkage and collaboration across multiple stakeholders hailing from diverse backgrounds. For example, threatened species inhabit land regardless of, and spanning, multiple national boundaries, societal differences and cultures. Effort on their behalf, thus, needs input from – and sensitivity to – many perspectives. Conservation requires the investment of eclectic effort from multiple parties from many diverse sources across a global theatre.
However, the array of threats to wildlife and domestic animals are intricately linked to complex social, political and economic human factors – problems so intricate and multi-layered that they are extremely difficult to solve. The human dimensions are pivotal to success of all endeavours – no matter the scale or situation, yet these vital areas are often-overlooked.
A sea change is crucially-needed to aid conservation and animal welfare – one that better considers the ‘people-side’, so that outcomes can be more impactful. This is easier said than done; understandably, in animal welfare and conservation of threatened species, the focus is on animals – far more rarely are the human dimensions considered. Collaboration is also acutely-needed to bring synergy – strengths that are larger than the sum of the individual parts. Indeed, not just collaboration, but wide collaboration, pushing boundaries, to bring new tools, new perspectives, new partners – to maximise outcomes.
Empowering Effective, Impactful Outcomes: ECP’s Holistic, Positive Approach
ECP addresses the urgent need for understanding and action to improve the human side of animal-related work; to empower people, build more impactful working relationships and unite diverse parties in impactful collaboration.
ECP’s specialist knowledge helps build and fuel eclectic, visionary, cross-sector, multi-background conservation and animal welfare partnerships.
ECP delivers leading expertise on the human dimensions that are pivotal to cross-sector, multi-background collaboration. These concepts help diverse parties – spanning multiple boundaries, cultures and backgrounds – to cohese into trusting, reciprocal collaborative partnerships and operate effective collective action. In a practical, accessible manner, ECP helps build and harness key human resources that lead to a tipping point, moving collaborative endeavour along a positive path – pivotal input that can aid the many species and situations currently passing ‘under the radar’.
Uniting in collaborative partnerships brings many benefits, not just enabling partners to better achieve goals through pooling skills and resources and bringing new perspectives – but also enriching all of us who are involved, so we and our outcomes are ongoingly empowered. ECP’s deep insight highlights many pathways to generate positive inter-personal interactions, the benefits of which can ripple out to empower conservation and animal welfare – and beyond.
ECP has fresh understanding of key routes which can be readily harnessed to galvanise, enhance and empower co-working and collaborative action for animals. ECP champions a new strategic protocol – a new best practice for collaboration: Driven by ‘real-world’ needs, ECP’s collaborative framework delivers recommendations to improve multi-party working, signposting key ways to harness everyday processes and situations as accessible opportunities to empower collaborative working and outcomes, build diverse partnerships, and galvanise holistic collective action to reach mutually-beneficial goals.
Collaboration, innovation and an open mind-set are key to foster new opportunities. ECP recognises that conservation and animal welfare work are empowered by embracing a highly diverse array of parties and effort, including novel parties and contributions from backgrounds not previously-associated with conservation and animal welfare – and, from parties commonly-recognised within the arenas, diversification to offer innovative contributions.
We believe diversity to be a key element of collective endeavour – looking wider, to more eclectic sources for collaborative partners and sources of guidance to maximise talent and impactful action. ECP helps broaden traditional boundaries; developing and nurturing collaborative networks between practice, academia, businesses and private sector, policy-making institutions, communities and individuals – integrating expertise and skills from commonly-recognised and more-unusual conservation and animal welfare parties within innovative, effective, cross-sector collective action.
ECP’s expertise promotes key pathways to widen conservation and animal welfare alliances, empowering collaborative efforts for animals; refusing to see any differences – social, cultural, geographic, economic, political, religious, professional or other – as boundaries, to collectively invest in an ethos and mission. ECP works with parties to develop and deliver innovative, inclusive partnership solutions, deeply valuing the specific expertise of all collaborators, harnessing an array of attributes to drive forward impactful collaborative endeavours.
ECP’s optimistic, positively-framed approach catalyses timely, relevant, impactful conservation and animal welfare solutions. Our approach is underpinned by wide-ranging experience and diverse perspectives from varied arenas around the world, including from many parties involved in exemplary conservation and animal welfare effort, and by scientifically-robust social science research informed by real conservation issues.
Effective conservation and animal welfare efforts require collaboration between multiple parties, spanning social, jurisdictional, political and natural boundaries and diverse backgrounds. Such collaboration can yield multiple benefits – to animals, and wider ecological and social benefits. However, to truly undertake such holistic efforts with people – all people; those who live alongside and those who work for wildlife and domestic animals, and those in any and every overlapping arena – requires us to accommodate not only one human view or need or approach, but thousands. ECP’s approach is applicable in all contexts, and therefore, can facilitate better co-working and cooperation in the complex social, economic and political contexts in which conservation and animal welfare operate.
Without a doubt, wide-ranging resources operate to help conservation and animal welfare – however, the key interpersonal resources on which ECP focuses are perhaps the most fundamental of all – they can be an extraordinary fuel to collaborative endeavour: a fuel whose costs are far exceeded by the benefits it brings and which in use is not consumed, but replenished exponentially – enabling its impacts to be potentially boundless.
The ECP perspective is holistic, considering how each of us in a collective impacts the other, showing how we can empower each other, no matter our societal or working background, to strengthen overall efforts, building key resources by refusing to see any differences as boundaries. Numerous people, in their daily lives, are uniquely placed to enhance wide-ranging effort – and better equipped to do so if their own capacity is empowered; everyone plays a critical and unique role. ECP shows pathways by which we can engage and empower all who are willing in collaborative endeavour to aid threatened species and animal welfare, aiding each other – and beyond.
ECP not only provides framework for practitioners of all sorts in animal welfare and conservation, but also transferable knowledge to aid partnership-building and collective action embracing multiple backgrounds, cultures and sectors in many disciplines and theatres. Indeed, ECP’s expertise in collaboration and partnership working can be utilised on varied problems with complex transboundary dimensions. ECP’s approach can underpin sustainability of collaborative endeavours – galvanising behaviour change and impactful outcomes.
We are humbled that numerous organisations and individuals, globally, from diverse backgrounds and sectors, ask for our recommendations. This is highly encouraging. Working together, we can maximise the benefits of our contributions to conservation and animal welfare, holistically empowering each other and outcomes for animals – and creating energy that can radiate far beyond.
Empowering Collaborative Partnerships 