The Netherlands and Belgium face complex challenges in many different areas such as health, education, integration and participation, energy, environment and economics. The people and organisations dealing with systemic failures in these areas are realizing more and more that the challenges they face can only be resolved by building new partnerships in which diverse perspectives, interests and capacities can come together, learn, and cooperate on multiple levels.
"Pluk" is a platform through which stakeholders from different sectors (government, business, education and civil society), from different levels (local, regional and national), come together to learn from and address complex challenges, in and across multi-stakeholder teams. The stakeholders in these projects are connected in a development program in which personal mastery and social renewal are interconnected. Pluk combines social, organisational, and personal innovation and learning through multi-stakeholder initiatives, programs and platforms.
In Pluk, stakeholders work on and learn through a diverse range of specific, complex, local and national social dilemmas, such as:
• reducing CO2 emissions in neighbourhoods,
• reintegrating former prisoners into society,
• increasing cultural diversity and desegregation,
• engaging in sustainable urban development,
• building a cohesive approach to education,
• co-creating community spaces where none exist.
In order to address these kinds of challenges, ten Pluk Change Labs have started or are starting.
For example, one Pluk Change Lab is dedicated entirely to CO2 emissions, convened around the question, “How can we more respectfully and sustainably use energy and decrease CO2 emissions in the development of houses and households in this neighbourhood?”
Since Pluk was launched, a number of initiatives have been developed around this question, applied to different neighbourhoods and supported in particular by social housing organisations. Previously, it didn’t seem possible to develop a sustainable business model for decreasing energy consumption at an adequate pace for all 2.4 million houses owned by the social housing organisations; now, it seems within reach.
In this way, Pluk is using the Change Lab approach to build the capacity of stakeholders, organisations, and institutions across social systems in The Netherlands and Belgium, in order to enable lasting systemic shifts in key issue areas.
For more on this project, please read Lenneke Aalbers' article here.