• The Project
  • Climate Advocates
  • Project highlights
  • News Archive
  • Project Partners

The Project

Challenge Europe was a three year project aiming to accelerate change to a low carbon future. It was active in these 18 countries
Czech Republic
Denmark
Finland
EstoniaEstonia		 France
Great Britain
Greece
Hungary		 LatviaLatvia
Lithuania
Nth. Ireland/Ireland
Norway		 Poland
Slovakia
Slovenia
Sweden		 Turkey
UkraineUkraine

Climate Advocates

600 young people aged 18-35 worked on climate challenges and local projects to reduce carbon use.

Project highlights

Want to see some advocates' ideas to help fight climate change?

 

News Archive

Read through the archive of news about the project activities between 2008 and 2011

 

Project Partners

Several hundred international and national experts and partners helped the Advocates to develop their ideas. You can find the list of partner organisations below.

 


The Project PDF Print E-mail

In 2008 the British Council launched the European element of its global climate change programme, “Challenge Europe”. This three-year project’s aim was to accelerate change to a low carbon future. It brought together ambitious young people from 18 European countries who wanted to make a lasting impact on climate change. It enabled these ”Climate Advocates” to improve their knowledge of climate change issues and provided them with a platform to develop innovative and practical projects to reduce carbon use.

In each of the participating countries we selected 15 ‘Climate Advocates’, from all walks of life, who want to commit their time to working together to tackle climate change. Over the period of one year each country team worked collaboratively to identify the key areas where they thought they can make a real difference. They then developed three concrete ideas to reduce carbon use through changes in policy, business or human behaviour. Through international networking events the Advocates also got numerous opportunities to share their ideas with each other, improve them, and get inspiration from other countries.

The groups then took their ideas to potential stakeholders, reaching out to decision-makers and relevant organisations, campaigning for support to turn their ideas into reality.

The philosophy of the project was simple: to create momentum through collaboration, innovation, energy, drive, passion, understanding and knowledge-sharing!

Challenge Europe in numbers

  • Challenge Europe project engaged 600 Climate Advocates
  • 18 European countries: Czech Republic, Denmark, Great Britain, Greece, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland/Northern Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey and Ukraine.
  • Every year the project worked with over 400 experts, 200 decision-makers and 150 partner organisations
  • The Climate Advocates have developed over 100 separate projects to reduce carbon use. The areas of focus of these projects include education, transport, housing and built environments, food and agriculture, energy, business practice - as well as raising awareness and taking personal action.
 
 
 
The Climate Advocates in Ireland and Northern Ireland have been working on food issues, from an awareness campaign about food growing, to creating a network of community gardens groups and encouraging communities to take collective action on climate change.