Paula Orr

Paula is a social scientist who has recently joined CEP after working on sustainability and participation in Chile and the UK since 1992.  Paula has come to CEP from the Environment Agency where she was employed as an Advisor on social policy and social science.   She was involved in a range of projects including: design and application of a social appraisal tool, environmental citizenship, involving faith communities in developing a policy on funeral practices and the environment and promoting behaviour change.  She is an experienced facilitator.  Paula co-ordinated the Environment Agency’s development of a strategy for engagement in the Water Framework Directive, provided support for setting up stakeholder liaison panels in each River Basin District in England and Wales and wrote guidance for the production of consultation documents on engagement and consultation. 

Paula has a BA in Politics and Philosophy from the University of York and an MSc in Political Sociology from the London School of Economics.  Between 1980 and 1984 she was involved in work on communications and development in both research and project management roles. In 1984 Paula was employed by the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and organised training for WI members on international and education policy as well as running leadership training.    She subsequently moved to Chile, where she joined UNICEF to contribute to the evaluation of innovative approaches to child development.  In 1994 she completed a diploma in Environmental Management and Planning at the Universidad de Santiago in Chile. 

Paula was a founder member and became Director in 1992 of the Chilean environmental NGO Ecologia y Desarrollo.  She pioneered work with marginal waste pickers in several major cities and created conditions for establishing recycled waste storage and marketing centres.  In conjunction with this work, she was involved in setting up a number of networks and working groups on waste management and recycling, including a cross-sector working group with business and government organisations.   Paula also developed and ran environmental training programmes for communities, local and regional government staff and managers from the public and private sectors.   In 1999 she took Ecologia y Desarrollo into a partnership with the Universidad de Concepcion to provide a national capacity building programme called “Networks in Action”, before returning to the UK in 2000.