Influence Award

This prize is for local, national or international organisations and networks that have a core focus on campaigning or lobbying to influence policy, regulation or public opinion in support of regeneration.

It is aimed at supporting those who are changing the context in which we are all working; who are helping to build and strengthen the regenerative movement.

There are at least two prizes in this category, with each being awarded up to £25,000. We aim to award one prize to a small scale project in this category.


Prize Recipients for 2023

In 2023 there are two prize recipients, sharing a prize fund of £50,000.

Below are the recipients and other short-listed projects.

Award Recipient

Rawa Fund

Rawa works to advocate for and strengthen an emancipatory, resilient Palestinian grassroots social ecosystem capable of resisting the Israeli colonial regime, strengthening the social fabric, and demonstrating the potential of creative community-led change.

Envisioning a liberated, self-determined, just, and participatory Palestinian society, Rawa sees intersectional grassroots communities as the key anchors for people to access power, share resources, and uphold collective well-being and abundance.

Rawa’s pilot participatory grantmaking and holistic support model launched in 2018. Over 60 grants have been awarded to grassroots community-based initiatives (mostly unregistered) across the West Bank, Jerusalem, ’48 areas, and Gaza, including:

  • Community-supported agriculture and cooperatives
  • Women-led social enterprises
  • Grassroots first aid training
  • Recycling and creative reuse
  • Mobile political theatre groups
  • Disability organising in refugee camps
  • Youth political organising
  • And many more
  • Community, Food, Networks
  • 2023
  • Influence Award
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Project information

Award Recipient

The European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC)

The European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) is a grassroots collective of peasants farmers across Europe.

Today peasants face many challenges, such as climate change and biodiversity loss which impact directly on their fields. The agricultural crisis is worsened by the geopolitical situation. These events are revealing the inadequacy of international markets for the regulation of agricultural prices in the public interest.

ECVC fights for food sovereignty, agroecology and peasants’ rights. It firmly believes that farmers are the ones best placed to bring about the systemic change needed to improve the European agricultural model. It believes that social change is possible through the organisation of right holders reclaiming and protecting their rights.

ECVC’s work includes:

  • Promoting an agroecological model of production rooted in traditional farmer knowledge, which means working together with nature, not against it.
  • Advocating for policies that ensure farmers can feed populations with local healthy food, whilst working in dignified conditions
  • Facilitating unified and coordinated actions in the European continent, in order to impact and reshape EU policy.
  • Ensuring that peasants’ voices are present and heard not only in the institutional arena but also at the heart of social movements fighting for social and climate justices, to build up a better future for all.

ECVC needs to continue and to strengthen its presence in the political fora to make the peasants’ voice heard.

  • Food, Networks
  • 2023
  • Influence Award
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Project information


Also short-listed

Eco House Global

Eco House Global is an Action for Sustainability non-profit organization whose main objective is to promote sustainable development through education, politics, communication, consultancy, ecological restoration and volunteering.

The organization consists of 12 internal Departments, each of which plan, develop and execute a variety of socio-environmental Programs.Eco Global House aims to make the world a better place through small actions that, when multiplied, make a huge difference.

Eco House Global’s work ranges from international, national, and local, and achievements/work so far include:

  • Running over 40 ongoing programs
  • Having one of the country’s largest NGO volunteer networks
  • Having over 20 full time employees
  • Being recognised by the United Nations as Youth Leaders in Development for the International Community
  • Being named an organisation of “Environmental Interest” by the Argentine National Congress.
  • Organising debates and public hearings
  • Teaching journalists, politicians, and other governmental officials about the climate crisis.
  • Having 12 departments, including departments that help with reforestation, consulting, education in local schools, and more.
  • Community, Networks
  • 2023
  • Influence Award
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Photo: Eco House Global

Project information

FEASTA: The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability

FEASTA is a foundation based at the Cloughjordan Ecovillage in Ireland. It has active members in 11 countries, and its work often has an international focus.

FEASTA recognises the enormous power of narrative and of the arts in bringing about change. The name ‘Feasta’, meaning ‘henceforth’ in Irish, is closely associated with an 18th-century poem that expresses profound grief over the deforestation, biodiversity loss and mistreatment of the vulnerable that marked the colonialist period, but also ends with an affirmation that when the situation improves again there will be “dances in long circles and bonfires and violin music”.

FEASTA’s mission is to identify the characteristics (economic, cultural and environmental) of a truly sustainable society, articulate how the necessary transition can be effected, and promote the implementation of the measures required for this purpose.

It has focused in particular on the need to look beyond GDP as a measure of progress, social protection measures such as universal basic income and services, commons-based, progressive taxation, the proposal that the atmosphere should be managed as a commons, and the need to ensure that everyone’s voice – including those of the Global South – is heard in decision-making.

Over the past 24 years FEASTA has:

  • Co-organised ten major conferences
  • Co-organised around sixty workshops, lectures and seminars
  • Established a website containing submissions, books, videos and an extensive collection of commentaries and discussion papers, many of which have been re-published.

Many of its ideas have gained significant attention since 1998.

  • Community, Networks
  • 2023
  • Influence Award
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Photo: FEASTA: The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability

Project information

Six Inches of Soil

Six Inches of Soil is the first feature length documentary film with an impact campaign to be made about regenerative farming and agroecology in the UK.

The project began with a 2021 NGO-commissioned film about regenerative farming in Cambridgeshire. With over 15,000 views and enthusiastic reviews, the producer-director team realised a more in-depth story needed to be told. “Six Inches of Soil” tells the story of our broken food system and what can be done to change it, following the compelling journeys of three new entrant regenerative farmers. At its heart is a call to restore our soils, increase diversity and rediscover our regenerative nature.

The film, due for release in late 2023, is an educational and advocacy tool that seeks to influence:

  • Farmers: sensitively portraying the opportunities and challenges faced in adopting regenerative practices and establishing alternative supply chains.
  • Policymakers: fostering a supportive policy environment for building a regenerative food and farming culture.
  • The Public Everyone that eats: explaining the impact of food choices and how these can support alternative food systems that provide healthy, affordable, regenerative food.

Six Inches of Soil is already creating waves in the UK regenerative and agroecology movements through its active social media engagement, a successful Crowdfunder and NGO partnerships. The team is designing a yearlong social impact campaign for 2024 with screenings, Q&A sessions, a shorter schools version and tailored resources. There are already many offers for farm screenings. Six Inches of Soil is an entirely voluntary and not-for-profit initiative.

  • Community, Food
  • 2023
  • Influence Award
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Photo: Six Inches of Soil

Project information

Size of Wales

The size of Wales (2 million hectares) is often used to measure the rate of global deforestation. The charity was set up to turn the negative use of Wales’ size on its head, and encourage people across the nation to help protect an area of tropical forest the size of Wales, as part of the national response to climate change.

The charity recognises how consumption habits, food and farming systems are causing a climate and nature crisis and is supporting community action both in Wales and overseas to tackle the underlying structural problems.

Currently, Size of Wales funds nine impactful projects in South America, Africa and South East Asia that support Indigenous and local communities to protect tropical forests, grow over 20 million trees using agro forestry techniques and promote regenerative farming, such as coffee cooperatives and permaculture groups.

Over the last three years, it has developed a campaign to make Wales a Deforestation Free Nation which calls on Government, public sector bodies, businesses and community groups to take action to eliminate imported deforestation from their supply chains. The charity is now a pivotal force for change in Wales and is influencing policy makers and the public to bring about action.

Size of Wales has also engaged with over 18,000 children in Wales to inspire climate action, run the award winning MockCOPs programme and supported the Youth Climate Ambassadors, a youth led climate activist group. They amplify the voice of Indigenous Peoples and youth, who are often excluded from climate discussions.

  • Community, Landscapes, Networks
  • 2023
  • Influence Award
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Photo: Size of Wales

Project information

The Ethos Fellowship at Permaculture Education Institute

The Permaculture Education Institute, established in 2018 and based in Australia, teaches permaculture teachers on 6 continents.

It is dedicated to supporting the myceliation of permaculture educators globally as a form of climate activism, regeneration and building of robust and resilient communities.

The Ethos Fellowship is a free program connecting young ecological-[pr]activists from around the world (including from refugee camps) with leading ecological scholar-activists such as Fritjof Capra, Nora Bateson, Jeremy Lent, Helena Norberg-Hodge & others. It is a ‘eco-university without walls’ with youth from Zanzibar to Pune, Ukraine to Australia.

For the Permaculture Education Institute, the very heart of regeneration is a shift in thinking to an ecological paradigm. This requires the opening of discussions and contexts that make way for a different type of conversation to happen, different forms of education to be experienced, a global community of practice to be created, new kinds of leaders who can help to breathe life into new ways of living regeneratively.

The Ethos Fellowship is an opportunity for youth aged 15-25 to be part of this change-making, to ask deep questions, to invite elders that inspire them, to collaborate on projects, unpack concepts, decolonise their minds, and form lifelong friendships and partnerships with their cohort and mentors. The cross-cultural exchange and mutual learning is transformative.

  • Community, Networks
  • 2023
  • Influence Award
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Photo: The Ethos Fellowship at Permaculture Education Institute

Project information

The Yorenka Tasorentsi Institute

The Yorenka Tasorentsi Institute was founded in 2018 and is led by Benki Piyãko, an indigenous and spiritual leader and environmental activist. The Institute works in the Upper Juruá Region and other parts of Brazil and Peru, as well as providing a model for the rest of the world.

The Yorenka Tasorentsi Institute stands for the preservation and safeguarding of nature and traditional indigenous cultural heritage. Its mission is to transform degraded areas in the Amazon Forest into abundant, bio-diverse, self-sustaining ecosystems, safeguarding traditional ancient knowledge in all spheres of indigenous culture.

The holistic view of the Institute includes five key elements:

  • Ecological – recovery and reforestation of degraded areas
  • Educational – training young leaders and empowering indigenous and non-indigenous communities to be future stewards of their territories
  • Social – creating new sustainable opportunities and ongoing income for local families
  • Cultural – safeguarding and giving visibility to traditional indigenous wisdom
  • Global – building a model for environmental regeneration of degraded areas that will be shared with community leaders around the world

The Yorenka Tasorentsi team has:

  • Planted over two million trees over the past ten years, with the aim to plant two million more within the next four years.
  • Is currently protecting more than 1,000 ha of land in the municipality of Marechal Thaumaturgo, and recovering degraded areas, caused by cattle raising and illegal logging practices.
  • Community, Landscapes
  • 2023
  • Influence Award
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Photo: The Yorenka Tasorentsi Institute

Project information

Think Like a Tree

Think like a Tree was founded by Sarah Spencer in 2017, following her Diploma in Permaculture Design.

Sarah recognised that the valuable tools, principles and ethics from permaculture, biomimicry, and other nature-inspired design solutions, had application to all human systems, but felt this valuable information was not reaching the mainstream fast enough in the context of a rapidly warming world, ecological destruction and mental and physical ill-health.

The ultimate aim of Think like a Tree is to bring regenerative, nature-inspired ideas to the mainstream. It recognises these approaches as the only solutions known to work on planet Earth. All its work aims to ‘meet people where they are’ in a language that is familiar and welcoming, valuing diversity. It campaigns and raises awareness of the importance of nature as a teacher, and ecosystems as a model for human systems, and tries to reach as diverse audiences as possible, both in the UK and worldwide.

The project comprises a number of different elements:

  • The Think like a Tree programme supports individuals to design the life they want with the ethics of Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share woven in.
  • The book Think like a Tree: The natural principles guide to life by Sarah Spencer enabled greater reach.
  • The Think Like a Forest programme is targeted at businesses and organisations and how these can become regenerative, using the principles of natural ecosystems as a guide.
  • 17 facilitators have been trained already in the UK, with 2023 seeing the movement expand worldwide.
  • Community
  • 2023
  • Influence Award
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Photo: Think Like a Tree

Project information

Tree Talk Plus

Tree Talk Plus began in 2014 in Uganda, and has a particular focus on youth and children, both in and out-of-school.

Its Vision is to have ‘nature Based Communities with good quality life’. It works towards shaping the minds and attitudes of communities in Uganda for: better land-use practices; increased resilience towards climate change catastrophes; improved living-standards for ordinary people.

Tree Talk Plus utilises a Communication, Education, Participation and Awareness (CEPA) approach. CEPA is about raising awareness on values and functions and creating an environment for pedagogical approaches that enable learning, through advocacy, public awareness and communication, media and journalism engagements and on-and-off field demonstrations.

This approach encourages the promotion of training in the fields of advocacy and lobbying, research, responsible management and supervision of resources in the environment and natural
resources sector.

Since 2019, Tree Talk Plus has been the secretariat for the Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) Network in Uganda, a network of over 50 organisations. The network aims at scaling up the FMNR model in the country. The FMNR model helps in regeneration of important indigenous trees on farmlands and in natural degraded forests and landscapes. In the past two years, the FMNR network has supported regeneration of over 98,350 hectares of agricultural and forest land.

  • Community, Landscapes
  • 2023
  • Influence Award
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