Introducing
The Young Green Briton Challenge
Volunteers for Future is thrilled to be a founding partner of the Young Green Briton Challenge, a national platform to nurture, support and celebrate youth-led, school-based climate action.
93%
of students increased their understanding of climate change
87%
of students learnt skills they think will help them in their futures
88%
of students feel hopeful that they can make a positive contribution to mitigating and adapting to climate change
100%
of teachers would recommend the programme to others
The Young Green Briton Challenge is a daring new initiative in its second year and is delivered as a partnership between Volunteers for Future, Social Innovation for All, the Ministry of Eco Education, and the Green Britain Foundation. It supports students aged 11-14 to learn and apply design, innovation, business, and other transferable skills, empowering them to explore local climate and sustainability issues and design entrepreneurial solutions (Eco-Ventures) or campaigns (Eco-Campaigns) to address the problems they identify.
Each participating school selects a whole year group (either Year 7, 8 or 9) to participate in the Challenge. Students are introduced and given time to explore the local contributing factors and impacts of climate change. Students then form teams to create their own solutions to these root causes of climate change during the Design Sprint workshop delivered by the YGBC team.
Following the design workshop, teams work together to further develop and prototype their ideas into tangible products, campaigns or enterprises. Teams then pitch at an Eco Dragons Den hosted by their school for investment. Each school will receive £150 of seed investment funding for their chosen top teams in the Make It Happen phase and provided with mentorship by our expert team of volunteer Challenge Mentors to put their ideas into action. One team project is then selected from each school in June to attend the National Award Finals where 4 teams will receive an additional £1000 to grow the impact of their Eco-Venture.
Read our impact report here
During its pilot year in 2022/23, YGBC engaged 16 schools across England and nearly 3,000 young people with 70 student-led projects receiving seed funding, covering a range of issues including biodiversity loss, air pollution, plastic pollution, littering, food waste, deforestation, fast fashion, access to renewable energy and lack of sustainable transport.
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To keep up with this year’s Young Green Briton Challenge, follow us on LinkedIn, or search the hashtags #YoungGreenBriton and #YGBC on our Twitter.
If you’d like to support the delivery of the Young Green Briton Challenge, please complete our application form or contact maddy@volunteersforfuture.org for further information.