Welcome Dennis Wilson to our Advisory Board.
SEF is proud to share a conversation with a dedicated member of the SEF team where passion, perseverance and projects paying off are key. Dennis Wilson is a trusted member of SEF’s Advisory Board, a respected part of their approach in projects. Even after years of collaboration his conversation with SEF highlights the thrill that companies and individuals can find when vision, methodology and tenacity align.
It was an organic finding of each other, Dennis, having approached a mining closure in Cobar, Australia with a similar methodology, was led to working with Suzette McFaul. Through discussion and the coalescing of ideas regarding other New Gold sites, Dennis came onboard with SEF to work in the Cerro San Pedro mine closure near San Luis Potosi in Mexico.
SEF Methodology: For community, by community.
Dennis describes his long held belief in methodology encouraging the responsibility for the future to be fully owned by the community. He believes and has experienced a community being given a structure imbued with grass-roots civic participation, bringing together business and government actors to a shared positive vision, being an incredibly powerful mix.
Seeing his hometown in Australia going through the pain of a mine closure, and with other towns struggling, even with the wealth from mining and extraction, piqued his interest. His journey began towards a passionate understanding of projects, methodologies and goals that allowed participation by communities and empowerment of entrepreneurs, without the burden of government red-tape, yielding significantly encouraging sustainable results.
Close to his heart, Wilson recalls the electrifying success of the project at Cerro San Pedro that SEF was a part of. To this day he remembers seeing a 15th century Mexican town with a disjointed community, many times at odds with each other, to the mine, band together to emerge a vibrant town, where neighboring communities would even travel to visit the now vivacious local restaurants, breweries and artisanal markets. To see huge lines just to get into a town that had once been full of tumbleweed, Wilson describes it as the proudest moment of his working life. This, he believes is fantastic proof of the methodology that SEF goes in with, equipping the town to own, work towards, and reap the benefits of its own passion, ideas and commerce.
Persevere: Inherent community trust, passion and skill
Working with SEF, he says, has meant the exciting opportunity to help communities realize they already have everything they need to make positive change for their own lives. Instead of folding into despair and external blame, rather to lean into the skills and power in the community to make all lives better.
Thinking over the obstacles of working with varying stakeholders, Wilson emphasizes perseverance. It comes down to perseverance permeating every aspect of the approach when dealing with anything new and different, and particularly altruistic corporate projects, many can be skeptical on all sides, inside and outside of the corporate and community sides. Whether a project is seen as too simple, doomed to fail, distrust in a community, unease over a company’s promises, the only way to silence critics is to keep pushing forward. SEF’s way has been to show that success breeds success, if it can be done once, it can be done again.
Specifically on obstacles, Wilson remembers at Cerro San Pedro, the looming distrust and fighting between community members. He describes the invigorating breakthrough when he and the SEF team were able to help the members understand that anything but inclusive was only going to hurt the community and be counter productive. They embraced that they had to work with and trust people that they had been fighting with for a long time. It was a critical step in understanding. The SEF team then were able to see families that had previously fought against trusting the mine step up into roles in its governance team.
As to bringing all stakeholders on side, particularly when it comes to different timelines of reward and gain, Wilson highlights the need for accurate and timely reporting. To provide compelling targets and indicators, to show the community, corporate stakeholders and partners, the clear and verifiable stages of success.
CSP Project: A marker of success of community lead projects
A powerful marker of success that continues to stick out in Wilson’s mind is the uplifting surprise of the Cerro San Pedro project. It was a joy to spend a weekend alongside thousands of people lining the streets, knowing that the business that was occurring was completely independent of the mine, brought on completely by the people, from an altruistic project that had been funded by the mine. It was all elements working together for long term sustainable good for the community that was truly the SEF way.
It is the ownership of the development of long term economic futures by the community, for the community, that is vital. Wilson highlights that an industry standard for mines is to start an economic project and hand it over to communities, not realizing the pitfalls. The methodology of doing more internalized conceptualizing and planning, rather than from within the community, means deciding what is best without their involvement, consequently the community is less able to do and learn for itself.
Integral to the SEF way is supporting the approach that mines and businesses should facilitate projects accepted and performed by the community, wrestled with and passionate about from the community or progress will be unsustainable. It is to lean towards encouraging communities to be self-reliant, even if that has not been the norm. Wilson is passionate that the approach should always be to look for ways to have the community have ‘skin in the game’.
Working towards trust, passion and self-reliance
Wilson accepts that a constant barrier will be initial distrust, common when outsiders come into communities. A lack of trust does need to be overcome. A community may feel a company is not honoring agreements by removing themselves from a project, and so it is a honed skill of facilitators like SEF that create a bridge of understanding. The community is not being abandoned but rather being given the opportunity to be stronger from self-ownership and autonomy.
Wilson remembers projects that have been challenging and discouraging but always comes back to the belief that the only way forward is for communities to take the reins, this is the only way positive change will be theirs, and theirs for the long run. He continues to crave seeing that actualise.
Coming from an environmental sciences background, Wilson interestingly is able to analogise that a healthy ecosystem is one that has many components, species rich in diversity is a sign of health. Monocultures however, are largely seem to not be supportive of a thriving ecosystem. In his mind he sees this as a good way to approach communities and sustainable economic futures. It is preferable to have a community with many small businesses that healthily compete and inter-relate, rather than commerce deriving from one monopoly, where finances stem from one or two very large entities. One or two large entities may support a community for a time but the damage is swift when they are removed, and a void is left behind.
Aligned with the SEF way, the community working within itself, for itself, to see success from its own passions, hard work and goals, is what fuels Wilson onward. He continues to look forward to the next project in an area that needs the challenging but deeply gratifying work SEF is a part of. Regardless of obstacles, for Wilson it will always be incredibly rewarding to be a part of these projects.