John Pearce (1942 - 2011)
posted December 16th, 2011
The Social Audit Network have to sadly let you know that John Pearce died on Monday 12th December 2011 after a long and determined fight against cancer. John’s inspiration, imagination and understanding of the need to get organised provided the impetus for the establishment of the Social Audit Network. Tributes to him and his work over a forty year engagement with community development are being received from right across the world. His funeral will be held at 11am on Tuesday 20th December in the
West Lothian Crematorium.
Many thanks
Alan
John Pearce Tribute Page
Personal Tribute To John Pearce - Alan Kay
posted December 16th, 2011
As many of you know John Pearce passed away on Monday 12th December 2011. Alan Kay has written a Personal Tribute that may reflect the experience of many of John's friends and colleagues....
"John Pearce was a close friend, a colleague and a source of inspiration. I shall miss his patience, his humour and his wisdom. He strode through life...with original ideas that he put into practice...with a strong sense of values and social justice...and with an ability to include and support the most vulnerable in society.
He had little patience with misguided authority and self-justifying power structures. He was always on the side of the common folk.
I first met John in 1988 when I applied for a job with Community Business Scotland (CBS) and we went out for a coffee at the People's Palace in Glasgow. I think he wanted to check me out. After the coffee we went on a visit to the hard-pressed Ferguslie Park housing estate in Paisley and he explained that what was lamentable was not that places like Ferguslie Park existed, but that they seemed to be allowed to continue to exist...
He converted me to a form of community development based on the need for local people to take charge of their own economic activity. By helping local communities to do this, we are empowering them.
John has inspired and influenced many people thoughout his life. He was an activist in the Community Development Programme in the early 1970s in Cumbria. He then worked tirelessly on promoting and developing community businesses in Glasgow and the West of Scotland. He established and ran Strathclyde Community Business which was the first development unit supporting the growing community business movement in Scotland. That led to the founding of Community Business Scotland in the early 1980s and the Scottish Community Enterprise Investment Fund.
After leaving SCB in the early 1990s be became self-employed and worked on ways community enterprise could account for their social purpose. This led to the development of social accounting and audit and work with the New Economics Foundation and others.
He had an agile mind coupled with a curiosity and sense of fairness which impressed nearly everyone he came into contact with. He truly was a social entrepreneur but with an understanding that lasting community change would only be achieved if it involved collective action – people working with each other for the common good.
Over the years he and I worked closely together - in odd places from Shetland to Wales, from Newcastle to Liverpool; and with the occasional trip abroad on European research projects.
I learnt a lot from John as he always behaved with integrity and showed me ways in which we can help others, maintain a set of values and do interesting work – all at the same time!
For me John is irreplaceable and I look back on the work we did together over the last fourteen years with affection. They are filled with good memories – too many to go through but ones that will stay with me and be remembered with fondness.
And so, if any of us in the future stop long enough in the lay-bys of life and contemplate the origins of social enterprise and social impact we shall stumble across the work of John Pearce – much more than a footnote in the history of the social economy.
I shall miss him – my friend, John Pearce."
New guide to SAA available
posted November 5th, 2011
The new Guide to Social Accounting & Audit can now be ordered via the SAN office or your SAN Regional Co-ordinator. The Guide takes account of the growing experience of social accounting and audit in recent years and includes reference to the range of frameworks and methods developed to help organisations explain and account for their performance and impact. It is a “roadmap” to the social accounting and audit process and has been written for social enterprises, social economy organisations and voluntary sector organisations that wish to regularly account and report on their social, economic and environmental performance and impact. The Guide consists of a paper version with a companion CD and costs £40 each (inclusive of P&P to a UK address) or £30 each if ten or more copies are ordered (plus P&P)
New Guide to Social Accounting and Audit
The postponed SAN 2010 conference was held on April 8th 2011
posted November 5th, 2011
The Fifth Annual Conference of the Social Audit Network was held in Newcastle on Friday 8th April 2011. Almost 90 delegates, representing key practitioners and supporters of social accounting and social reporting, gathered to hear about the latest national and international developments in social impact measurement.
Both the plenary and workshop sessions generated lively debate about where social accounting and audit is going in the current political and economic climate. A fuller report of the Conference will be placed on this website shortly. In the meantime please click here to view Conference photographs and below to view the presentations delivered at the Conference.
Presentations from the Conference
SAN Conference 2011
