Bead and Proceed: Focus on your five
Making a necklace as a way to de-stress after a hard day’s work led lawyer Bridget Williams to change career. In 2019, she left law to start a social enterprise that uses creativity to promote the United Nations’ Global Goals, otherwise known as the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Bead and Proceed offers self-guided kitsets, as well as in-person workshops for small groups through to large corporate gatherings, that enable workplaces and sector groups to connect their day-to-day work with the United Nations’ goals. Each participant gets the opportunity to paint and construct a keyring or necklace made up of ethically produced wooden beads, in the colours that align with their top 5 choice of SDGs.
“It was the colours that connected me with the goals,” says Bridget recalling the first time, in 2016, when she came across the UN’s striking, gridlike poster of SDGs in a magazine article.
“I was like ‘what is this beautiful, meaningful framework?’ ”
More than 15,000 participants have made beaded keepsakes through the Bead and Proceed programme, from sectors as diverse as palliative care, philanthropy, and engineering. Each necklace and keyring acts as a reminder of the “clear, colourful, creative, striking goals” that that person is passionate about.
At a strategic level, Bead and Proceed collates data from each workshop (anonymously supplied online) to help improve organisational leadership; the information provided assists workplaces to maximise the synergy between their staff’s passion for SDG goals and organisational processes and outcomes.
“Facilitated workshops help each team to connect with the goals personally. …It’s not just a tick-box sustainable strategy exercise; Bead and Proceed helps make sustainable development part of the culture within each organisation,” says Bridget.
To illustrate some of the practical ways change has been instituted, Bridget recalls one business going paperless, another changing its vehicle fleet to electric, and another formally celebrating its workplace SDG champions.
Self-guided kitsets have been devised for locations not currently serviced by workshops; each kitset provides materials for up to 7 people. Each time a kit is bought, another is donated to a low decile school or ‘deserving’ organisation*.
After 5 years’ working full-time for Bead and Proceed, Bridget believes that her ‘empowered action’ approach helps motivate people beyond overwhelm and apathy: reactions, she says, that are often evident in the world today. Creativity is a key element, which Bridget continues to incorporate into both her professional and personal life.
“Creativity is the motor behind you: it helps feed your optimism and helps you ideate and brainstorm, operate in a state of flow, and to stay engaged on your mission and direction,” she enthuses.
* If you fit one of those criteria, get in touch, says Bridget!
For more info on the Sustainable Development Goals, see this resource.
