Consulting Services
People Planet Purpose is a consultancy passionate about connecting with people and the planet in purposeful ways, led by Landcare Australia award-winning practitioner Zhan Patterson.
Informed by years of experience across the Education, Government, Tertiary and NGO sectors, People Planet Purpose works with organisations to create meaningful impact across four focus areas:
Community and stakeholder engagement – bringing people together around shared environmental and social impact goals
Strategy and strategic direction – creating the frameworks that turn vision into outcomes and real change
Policy and program evaluation including social and environmental impact – measuring what matters, communicating it clearly
Environmental engagement, education and advocacy – building awareness, connection and action
Please get in touch to discuss how we can best tailor our support to your organisation’s needs.
Community and stakeholder engagement
People Planet Purpose specialises in the development and delivery of strategies and designing and facilitating engagement for everything from small projects to large-scale, complex, multi-agency programs.
Capabilities
Strategy and Engagement Plan Development
At People Planet Purpose, our unique fusion of engagement nous with evaluation and social impact understanding means that your strategies are developed with a clear consideration of what success means for you and your organisation. This is central to their success and at the heart of how we approach plan and strategy development.
- People Planet Purpose brings years of experience co-designing strategies and engagement plans with the people in the organisation who will ultimately deliver them
- We bring an explicit focus on organisational capability uplift and alignment throughout the process
- We work with organisations to help them decide on the best path for the development and delivery of their strategy
Community and Stakeholder Engagement Delivery
People Planet Purpose has a depth of understanding of engagement techniques that work, including experience facilitating community and stakeholder meetings and engagements — from small groups of 20 to large-scale engagements of 2,000 people — in addition to the delivery of other engagement methods.
- We design bespoke engagement architecture for your organisation, or specific components, depending on your needs.
- We provide tailored support for organisations identifying the need to uplift their engagement capability and support you to bring the voice of the community and stakeholders into your decision-making processes, as well as create sustaining and mutually-beneficial partnerships for your organisation.
Experience in this area
People Planet Purpose have enabled and developed complex multi-agency community and stakeholder engagement programs for State and Local Government including NSW Government’s Biodiversity Offset Scheme with the Department of Premier and Cabinet, NSW Regional Plans and the engagement strategy to support the Greater Sydney Plan, the NSW Government’s Water for Life Plan for NSW Government’s Metropolitan Water Directorate as well as the NSW Government’s Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Framework and Regional Clean Energy Program.
People Planet Purpose has also worked with the Queensland Government on their Women’s and Youth Strategies and the Queensland Government’s water policy and engagement division.
Strategy Development, Program & Policy Evaluation
People Planet Purpose can facilitate the co-design of strategies and evaluation frameworks to support internal alignment and enable everyone involved to be working towards the same goals.
Capabilities
People Planet Purpose brings a rigorous, practical approach to both strategy development and the evaluation of policy and program effectiveness. This can range from social and environmental impact assessments to cross-governmental or institution-wide strategic frameworks.
We understand the importance of creating a clear strategic framework with an evaluation focus built in from the start, rather than bolted on at the end. This ensures success is mutually agreed upon within an organisation from the outset, with clear metrics to guide the delivery of outcomes and outputs, and demonstrate impact to the stakeholders who need to act on it.
Experience in this area
Zhan has led the development of specific program strategies as well as large organisational strategies, including leading the University of Queensland’s Global Strategy and Partnerships.
Zhan holds a Graduate Certificate in Evaluation from Melbourne University and an IAP2 Certificate from the International Association of Public Participation, bringing both methodological depth and a strong understanding of participatory approaches to this work.
Environmental engagement, education and advocacy
People Planet Purpose supports projects and programs across the environmental and sustainability spectrum from infrastructure, clean energy, water and biodiversity.
Capabilities
People Planet Purpose has a long track record of designing and delivering programs that engage communities and organisations with environmental and sustainability issues in ways that are meaningful, locally relevant and built to last.
This work draws on Zhan’s background as an educator and deep commitment to connecting people with the planet. People Planet Purpose designs programs that go beyond awareness-raising – they build genuine understanding, local relevance and the conditions for lasting advocacy and on-the-ground action.
Experience in this area
People Planet Purpose is highly experienced in developing, implementing and evaluating programs with an environmental focus such as:
the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils, Water in the Landscape Program, which was an innovative, multi-year environmental program engaging communities across Western Sydney in water management issues through the lens of deliberative democracy forums and cultural projects.
the award winning Alive! Youth Environmental Engagement Program. Learn more about the Hawkesbury Environment Network here, and in this Landcare in Focus article which recognised the achievements of young people in the Hawkesbury as part of the Alive! program with Gardening Australia’s Costa Georgiadis.
