CliVEx: Climate Action Project

When generating Climate Action Project ideas students are given three potential project ‘tracks’ to help them focus their efforts. These tracks are:

• Social Action – projects that affect people’s behaviour to be more sustainable, and use ‘people power’ to enact change for the good of the community and the climate. They are concerned with educating, influencing, promoting understanding, motivating, or building relationships. 
• Political Action – projects that influence people in power to take action for the planet. They are concerned with leveraging institutions and authorities to make concrete action in terms of political leadership, laws, policies, or institutional norms.
• Environmental Action – projects that directly improve the local environment. They are concerned with making observable differences in community or natural spaces, and encouraging people in the community to get involved in caring for nature.

Students refine their ideas and form teams with others who share the same interests. Each team submits a detailed project plan, and receives constructive feedback from course staff. They continuously communicate and meet throughout the project to collaborate on shared tasks and support each other in individual implementation. At the end of the course, they deliver a presentation about their Climate Action Project that includes what they achieved and evidence of impact. 

The first two semesters of the CliVEx Climate Justice Virtual Exchange have led to impressive outputs from student teams. Collectively, students have designed and implemented 109 different Climate Action Projects. They include: 

• A podcast that “makes climate issues accessible and engaging for a young audience by connecting them to trending topics, current events, and the zeitgeist.”
• A youtube video titled Rising Temperatures, Rising Injustice: Women in the Climate Crisis, which tells the ‘herstory’ of climate change and educates audiences about the unique situations faced by women in both their experience of climate change and in climate activism.
• A series of community dialogues in Palestine, Kazakhstan and Italy that achieved high levels of growth within their participants in regard to knowledge of climate change and climate justice, concern for the environment, and reduction of eco-anxiety. 
• A series of coordinated clean-ups in France, Italy and Palestine and a research project on how the war in Lebanon is affecting the environment.

Outcomes of the CAP assignment have included:

• Concrete measures taken in the areas of sustainability and youth-led climate action.
• The improvement of local environments across Europe, Southwest Asia and North Africa, including trash clean-ups, planting olive trees, and rehabilitating natural areas of cultural importance. 
• The exposure of citizens around the world to accurate and compelling information on climate change and what manageable steps they can take to combat it, which many CAP presentations have demonstrated has led to significant changes in knowledge of and attitudes towards climate change and climate action. 
• Cross-border cooperation, which has the potential to build the foundation for future ties between them and their institutions or communities, as well as a model they can draw on to enhance any future coordinated endeavours they take part in with people from other countries. 
• The continued implementation of several projects beyond the end of the course, which magnifies the long-term outputs of the projects.  

Throughout the duration of the CAP assignment, students have also shown improvement in the following values and competencies: 

• The ability to brainstorm, communicate and work effectively in remote multicultural teams, which sets them up to excel in online, English speaking, or international/intercultural team environments. This gives students advantages in many areas including academic achievement and employability.  
• The value and practice of active citizenship, brought about by active participation in their communities, regional governments and local/national institutions. 
• The value and practice of acting for sustainability, brought about by participation in action on climate change and getting others involved.
• Leadership, communication and interpersonal skills.
• Project planning and management skills. 
• Teamwork and team building skills.
• Digital skills, which can lead to improvement in closing the digital skills gap.
• Strong improvements on sustainability competences measured through the Greencomp: European sustainability competence framework. See more about these developments in our blog on Climate Justice in 2024.