Beyond the 'boys in the boats'

Cathy is our director of supporter development - making sure we have money and taking good care of our supporters - and is next up in the blog relay, a whistle-stop tour of Greenpeace staff here in the UK. Click here to catch up on the other entries.

I've worked at Greenpeace for more than eight years now, and I do sometimes wonder about why I don't think about leaving. I don't think I'd expected to stay here that long. Nothing to do with Greenpeace really; previously my CV looked more like a shopping list, than a career. But, the longer I stayed here the more I've come to appreciate just how different it is working here. And not in the way I think most people would think.

Most people I talk to, who don't know us, think it's all ‘boys in boats' who do ‘stunts' at the last minute, dreamt up in the pub. It couldn't be further from the truth. Well, true that some ideas are born in the pub, but just like ideas we might have anywhere else from the office to the bath, they undergo the same scrutiny before we actually do anything about them.

Oddly, I hadn't realised until I was part of it, but I'd never worked with people who really did think very hard about what they were doing, and why, before launching into things. At the same time I'd never worked with people who are as creative, and lateral as the people I've met here. It's quite an intense combination, with its stresses and strains, but it has led to some incredible work...

Like the investigation we did into the soya trade in the Amazon. We ended up exposing McDonalds' role in the supply chain and they came on board to our campaign. Totally unexpected, but totally effective idea. There has been a two-year ban on deforestation in the Amazon for soya production since that campaign - extended for a third year last year - while a permanent ban is worked on. Amazing stuff.

Or like Airplot, where we have bought a bit of the third runway that the government is trying to build, and getting thousands of people to join us in our campaign to stop it. It's such a clever and, let's face it, cheeky idea we already have thousands of people signed up as beneficial owners to help the campaign.

Or like when we targeted Unilever through their brand, Dove, to try to get them on board with our campaign to stop the palm oil industry destroying what is left of the ancient forests of Indonesia. As part of our campaign we re-made the ‘Onslaught' video that Dove had made targeting the cosmetics industry's approach to young women, we made a video called (on)slaughter. It climbed the video charts on YouTube, and had a pretty major effect on Unilever. They started talks with us only 10 days into our campaign.

Inspiring moments? Of course. But if it stopped there I think I might have gone by now. May be it's just me, but I think it gives us something unique, something that (I hope) anyone who is involved in our work ‘gets'. The belief that we can do it. It doesn't matter how small we are compared with multi-national companies, governments, vested interests, we know we have the skills and creativity to achieve huge change. It keeps me going when I am negotiating a contract and I'm trying to get the price down just a bit more, and it keeps me going when I'm looking at my email in box and wondering how on earth I'll ever get through to the useful stuff. And it keeps me going when I think about the time we (don't) have left to tackle climate change. How lucky am I?