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Hear and share good practice & new ways to reach the hard to reach: how best to do this now? Community energy advisors/practitioners unite!

About this Event

How to reach vulnerable energy clients now?

Energy advisors face a challenge to reach vulnerable clients under normal circumstances, how can we best do this under lockdown? Energy advisors, unite!

This open-space style setting offers some time, space, and a process whereby you can hear, share and develop ideas to help reach the most vulnerable in our communities. Come and network with others like you who care about helping people and planet via quality, friendly and impartial energy advice.

Many of us have switched from workshops, home visits, pop-up energy advice desks, other in-person events and energy advice cafes to telephone, WhatsApp, text and Zoom advice sessions. These bring their own challenges, like the loss of non-verbal communication cues such as body language. Let alone trying to cut through the noise of all of the social media, websites, blogs, newsletters and other digital forms of connecting with people. What about those who are digitally excluded? How do we swiftly and effectively reach them?

The issue on which this event will be centred is how we can most effectively help those most in need, while working remotely and delivering effective energy and money saving action. The country might be in lockdown now but we don’t know for how long and with the added pressure of an estimated 600,000 households set to fall into fuel poverty this winter, things are even harder out there. How can we best do what we do? Join us for this free, action-packed, informal but serious-about-co-creating-strategies-that-work session. We will reflect on our own collective experiences of what works by sharing, learning and developing together for the new normal.

Let’s harness the collective intelligence of the community energy community to find solutions that work!

Often reaching the hard-to-reach vulnerable in our communities with meaningful assistance and advice is hard enough but, under lockdown, both ad-hoc and more established referral pathways are drying up. By leaning into the challenges and opportunities we  face – as the world continues to wrestle with the uncertainty the pandemic brings, and in a post-Covid world – we hope this event will help foster the sharing of ideas, start to identify new solutions and bring us renewed hope.

This event is open to all energy advisors, facilitators, programme managers, health workers, charity volunteers, home visitors, debt advisors or anyone working in community energy settings or other shared values organisations. We welcome other energy advisor members to join us from around the UK. The only thing you need in order to take part is curiosity and a desire to invent a better future for us all!

Open-space style

The idea of open space is simple: think of it as a space dedicated to the hallway conversations you often have at a conference. You – the attendee – choose the agenda for the session: rather than attending a set of scheduled talks, you self-organise to build out a multi-track programme. As a group, you explore the questions and problems you’ve set together. It’s open space, so the agenda is set by participants on the day.

Got an idea you want to test out? An issue you need help clarifying or want to hear from others who tried it and have lessons to share? Brilliant. Bring your question with you, and invite your peers from up and down the country to explore it.

Not got a question, but keen to debate the future with some project workers, new volunteers, alongside seasoned veterans doing this work? That’s great too. Themes that emerge from this open space will help shape an openly available live wiki of energy advice and effective outreach action. Join us to explore the emerging ideas and share resources. We’re looking forward to seeing you there!