Citizen Zero 03: stories spotlight ft. tackling play inequality with Dream Networks, and protecting the oceans with Chris Desai
This week we're thinking about the power of collaboration, shared action and working together towards real impact. In our recent interview with Dream Networks' Marie Williams we learned, not just about the importance of play in helping children thrive, but also the power of working together with children to create spaces in which they can learn, feel safe, and have better lives. It's great example of the good that can come from shared experiences.
In the same spirit, we look at the global network of chapters that Chris Desai has built as part of UOCEAN and who together are pioneering ways to clear the world's rivers and oceans of plastic. If you're a fan of collective action and shared purpose, you might also want to check out our new Impact Connect: community, a place for organisations, businesses, and visionary leaders making a positive impact and committed to delivering change through their work. Let us know what you think, and get in touch to join us!
Changing lives through play: Marie Williams on the importance of play, co-creating with children, and addressing global play inequality
Marie Williams remembers the moment well. After two weeks of volunteering in Tanzania she’d become close to Esther, the three-year-old girl who walked every day from her home, joining the group of community members, local skilled workers, and overseas volunteers, and becoming Williams’ favourite wood sander in the process. On this day she was inspecting the colourfully painted structures the team had built in the dry, empty field with interest. Finally daring to climb one of the short wooden stumps and jumping off she realised its purpose: it was for her and other children to play on.
For Williams, a senior chartered engineer at the time with experience in aerospace, nuclear fusion, and software design, the moment was a catalyst. It showed the huge difference play can make to children and communities, and demonstrated that everyone can contribute towards engineering solutions and creative programmes. “When I got back to work, I just couldn’t stop thinking about what we’d done, the way we’d engaged the community by co-designing the spaces we built with them to suit their specific requirements, and the need for play I’d seen,” she recalls.
“I saw firsthand the challenges of the space – it was pretty desolate, the ground was hard, it was hot and there was little shade, so there just wasn’t anything for children to do. It focused me on the amount of space that exists that isn’t conducive to any kind of play,” says Williams. “I was working with Atkins Realis, a company that had helped me to thrive as an engineer and also develop my passion for play and social impact. I was working as a senior aerospace engineer and later in the ITER nuclear fusion project developing solutions to make energy use more sustainable. However, I was impact-led and, while I was doing good work, I felt the problem of play calling me. It just seemed like there was so much more needed elsewhere.”
Williams embraced the challenge and formed Dream Networks C.I.C in 2016, a social enterprise that addresses play inequality around the world by enabling businesses, communities and educational institutions to collaboratively design and build sustainable play areas in marginalised communities. Inspired by William’s time in Tanzania and her lifelong passion for working and volunteering with children, including as a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) ambassador in schools and youth worker in her local community, Dream Networks recognises that children and young people across the world need access to inclusive and safe spaces where they can play and thrive. In a 2022 Tedtalk Williams, highlighted the need for us all to address the global emergency and suggests how this can be done through designing with children and building local connections with communities.
Through its programmes – Safe Haven and Love Plays – it creates play areas tailored to the needs of the community and the forms of play that children desire. Children and collaboration are at the heart of this process through a co-designing approach that engages children, encourages creativity, learning and development, and provides them with the agency and tools to create their own play spaces. Approximately 75% of the people Dream Networks works with are under the age of 18, or are BAME or women.
“We work with schools and organisations that create play spaces like homebuilders and local authorities. We also work with the charitable or social responsibility areas of businesses – play inequality is linked to financial hardship and inequality, and social and economic deprivation, so including businesses in the conversation is essential,” Williams explains. “It’s highly collaborative and centred around co-design and children leading the way we make spaces; we follow a situated practice style, which is about putting children in authentic learning environments, immersing them in activities and using creative problem solving. When we reach the building stage, we always try to use sustainable, natural, or local materials and work with the local community to promote the conservation and innovative use of natural resources.”
The future is blue: Chris Desai discusses cleaning the world's oceans, diversifying conservation, and why he left the fast fashion industry behind
“It was a restaurant car park,” recalls Chris Desai . “A family threw their rubbish out of their car next to us and I remember my mum picking up every single piece, knocking on their window, and throwing it back in all over the driver. I was pretty young, but what came next has always stuck with me. She told them ‘take your rubbish home with you, this is our planet, my home, and my children’s home’. It’s pretty powerful seeing someone being an activist like that when you’re a kid. I guess you’d call it positive reinforcement.”
It’s often the smallest actions that define our lives. Desai’s journey is no different, except for the fact you can add several more defining moments like this one to the list. Like experiencing what it meant to be the son of a refugee in 1980s England. Like working in fast fashion only to realise the terrible impact it has on the environment. Like recognising the distinct lack of working class or Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) charity participants when wanting to donate his own company’s money. Or, how a lifelong love of water ended up being the catalyst that spurred him to rid our oceans of plastic. Turns out, it’s a winning combination.
UOCEAN® 2050 , a grassroots solution for saving the oceans from plastic by 2050, and The VAYYU Foundation® are the sum of these influences. The latter was set up by Desai in late 2018 after a decade’s stint as Creative Director at a leading fashion brand – years of travelling for work, meeting suppliers worldwide, and seeing firsthand the impact the industry has on the planet and the millions of marginalised people working to support it, backing Desai into an almost inevitable epiphany. A little over five years later, he heads up two global conservation projects ( UEARTH® 2050 sits alongside UOCEAN® 2050 ), one the UK’s most respected BAME-led charities, promotes and encourages inclusivity in environmental conservation, and runs an organic, sustainable fashion brand.
“I’m a third generation sailor,” says Desai of his enduring love affair with the ocean. “I’ve sailed since I was young and have always been out on the water whenever I could. I feel at home there, it’s a spiritual place and somewhere I always find peace. When fashion and the lifestyle that went with it became too much, it was the obvious way to take some time out; I left the world behind to learn how to sail professionally.”
Transformational journey
Desai spent 10 years in fast fashion, seeing enough to make him want to make meaningful change both personally and for the planet. “I travelled, I’d visit sites around the world and saw things I’ll not forget: rivers dyed different colours from runoff from factories, terrible working conditions, people who were already marginalised or suffering being taken advantage of for cheap labour – just the degradation of our planet. It spurred me on to working with BAME communities, too. I saw how the industry works, how privileged the store groups and buyers are but how disproportionately they affected people of colour around the world. The East creates the products for Western consumers and is basically left with the pollution and fallout from how people are working. I had to get off and get back to who I really was”
Sailing lessons turned into a six-month journey of discovery around the world, where Desai ditched the phone and laptop, instead focusing on authenticity and purpose. “I’d lost who I was,” he reflects. “I’d been working relentlessly and lost sight of the impact I was having – if you love the planet but your job and career don’t align with those inner beliefs, you can’t help feeling a hypocrite and wonder why you’re doing what you’re doing. I distinctly remember a moment that changed me: I was meditating, the sun was shining over the ocean, and I could see dolphins swimming. I just felt deeply connected to the planet and to the water, and a real responsibility to stop what I was doing and take action.”
Impact Connect: our network of purpose-driven businesses, organisations, and people
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