Young people take climate action in the mountains

Running a Flow In Action Innovation Challenge Workshop with students at Verbier International School (VIS) in November 2019, focused on equipping them with the right tools for taking climate action in their local community.

For this school in the Swiss Alps, that means exploring how to make their local ski resorts sustainable.

Flow In Action Innovation & Impact Challenges use design and systems thinking to build youth wellbeing, problem-solving skills and give them a starting point for real projects. It all starts with opening up a safe space for them to imagine, download and test ideas.

We specifically played with the challenge of making their local ski resorts sustainable by the end of 2030.

First, we imagined and downloaded ideas. Second, we reverse engineered from 2031 to the present day to understand our path for achieving our ideas and impact.

I used futures-thinking as our starting point, we dreamed bigger to bring in new perspectives and insights; exploring what we need to do to make it happen, opens up the incredible space of understanding impact. Finally, we uploaded ideas onto the Flow In Action Hazu Edtech platform, so that they were captured as part of a global library.

From a hyperloop inspired vertical transport system to, and around, the resort; to fully solar-powered housing; to telecabines which carbon-capture. To turn these ideas into reality, the students had fantastic insights on repurposing existing solar panels, incentivising different behaviour of residents and tourists; thinking about ways to manage the value chain, so as not to cause more damage and move away from a consume/dispose culture.
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Why do it this way? This style of challenge-based learning, makes a space for every young person to show up with their unique creativity and become a problem-solver, enabling them to explore essential questions about impact on people and planet, so that they can adapt solutions to respect and protect.

Plus, it’s practicing and embedding the design and systems thinking skills recognised as essential future-of-work skills for Industry 4.0, if not the most vital. This learn to move mountains® approach becomes people and planet-centred design-thinking, empowering students as the innovator and entrepreneurs of the new decade.

Solution: Youth Innovation & Impact Challenge Workshop
Topic: Creativity, Innovation, Climate Action, SDGs
Commissioned by: Verbier International School, Valais, Switzerland
Date: November 2019

[Coursera Global Skills Index: https://www.coursera.org/gsi] 

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