My initiative is designed for and delivered in London
Yes
I am 18 years of age or above, by the application deadline.
Yes
My organisation is a registered UK entity and has a London-based address.
Yes
My organisation is a non-profit (e.g. school, university, or local authority) — not a for-profit, which can only join as a partner.
Yes
If there is a for-profit organisation as a partner in my initiative, they work on a cost-recovery basis only.
Yes
My solution is implemented at scale, or if not, I have a clear business plan, a minimum viable solution (prototype, pilot, or proof of concept), and evidence of work or impact in London within your coalition.
Yes
I am aware that, if I am submitting more than one application to a Challenge run by Ashoka and Go! London, only one of them is able to progress through the stages.
Yes
Are you an employee (and their children and grandchildren) of Ashoka or any of its respective affiliates and participating advertising and promotion agencies?
No
I have read and accepted the Challenge Terms & Conditions
1
First Name
Last Name
Pronouns
Email address
I would like to receive notifications and updates about Go London!, Ashoka, Ashoka Changemakers, and other Ashoka opportunities.
Are you an Ashoka Fellow?
Are you applying from an organization founded by an Ashoka Fellow?
If you are applying from an organization founded by an Ashoka Fellow, please specify the name and organisation of the fellow below.
Initiative Title
Fitness with no Waste
Lead Organization Name
Chizuk
My initiative is designed for and delivered in London
1
Year that you started/ registered your organisation
1996
Website URL(s) or Social Media Handles
www.chizuk.org.uk
Initiative Stage
Growth (You’ve moved past the very first activities; working towards the next level of expansion.)
Sectors/Themes: What topic does your project most directly relate to?
Health & Fitness
Initiative Summary: Describe your initiative in one sentence
Our aerobics and football project is an initiative to transform planetary health by promoting fitness through eco-friendly materials and methods.
Challenge Focus: What topic does your initiative most directly relate to?
Enabling climate-resilient participation
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve and who will benefit the most from your solution? How close are you to the problem and/or community impacted?
Many people in our local community face overlapping challenges around mental wellbeing, physical inactivity, and low engagement with climate-conscious lifestyles. For individuals experiencing stress, isolation, or financial pressure, climate change can feel distant or overwhelming, despite the fact that everyday habits around travel, activity, and use of local resources have a real environmental impact. Our project addresses this gap by making climate awareness practical, accessible, and relevant. Through local aerobics and football sessions, we promote low-impact physical activity that relies on nearby spaces, reusable equipment, and minimal resources. Rather than delivering abstract climate messages, the project models simple, achievable behaviours that link personal wellbeing with environmentally responsible choices, such as reducing car travel, using outdoor or community facilities, and engaging in active, low-carbon lifestyles. Those who benefit most are adults already engaged in our wellbeing programmes, particularly individuals experiencing isolation, low motivation, or barriers to accessing mainstream fitness or environmental initiatives. Many would not take part in a climate-focused project alone, but do engage through trusted, community-led physical activity.
Your approach: How are you addressing the problem outlined above? How are you using the power of sport and physical activity to build awareness, shift behavior, and enable sustainable participation for all in response to the climate crisis? We'd love to know about the origin of your idea, and what was your "aha" moment" that led you to take action?
Our approach uses sport and physical activity as an accessible way to build climate awareness and support sustainable behaviour change in communities often excluded from environmental initiatives. We recognise that sport can generate unnecessary waste, travel, and resource use, and that most environmental best practice is concentrated in large institutions rather than small community settings. Our programme adapts these ideas for local delivery. Through aerobics and football sessions, we model low-impact activity using nearby spaces, reusable equipment, and simple structures that minimise waste. Rather than technical climate education, awareness is embedded through experience, helping participants connect everyday choices around movement, travel, and leisure with environmental impact. Sport offers a non-threatening entry point. For participants facing isolation, low confidence, or financial pressure, physical activity provides a familiar and trusted way in. Once engaged, sessions encourage reflection, discussion, and small, achievable shifts in behaviour that feel realistic and sustainable, supporting long-term participation. The idea grew from our existing wellbeing work. We noticed participants were concerned about waste and climate issues but felt sustainability was “not for people like us.” Our “aha” moment was realising that the same community-led, preventative methods used for mental wellbeing could also support climate awareness. By integrating environmental thinking into trusted, culturally appropriate physical activity, we can reach people who would otherwise be missed.
Collaboration with young people and the community: In what ways does your initiative engage young people and community members closest to the problem? What role do they play in building the solution you deliver?
Our initiative is rooted in close collaboration with young people and community members who are directly affected by the challenges we aim to address. Many participants are already engaged in our wellbeing and physical activity programmes, giving us an ongoing, trusted relationship rather than one-off consultation. Young people and community members shape the project in practical ways. They influence how sessions are structured, where they take place, and what feels accessible and relevant in their daily lives. Feedback is gathered informally during sessions and through regular conversations, allowing the programme to adapt in real time. This ensures that activities remain culturally appropriate, inclusive, and responsive to genuine needs rather than assumptions. Participants also play an active role in modelling and reinforcing sustainable behaviours. Choices around using local spaces, travelling actively, sharing and caring for equipment, and reducing waste are developed collectively within the group. This peer-led approach helps normalise climate-conscious habits and makes behaviour change feel achievable rather than imposed. Young people, in particular, contribute energy, ideas, and leadership within sessions. They support each other’s engagement, help welcome new participants, and inform how climate awareness is discussed in ways that feel relevant to their generation. Their lived experience helps keep the project grounded and credible. By positioning community members as co-creators rather than passive recipients, the project builds ownership, confidence, and long-term participation. This collaborative approach strengthens the impact of the initiative and ensures the solution reflects the realities of those closest to the problem.
Potential for/Evidence of Impact: How do you imagine your initiative will make a difference in raising climate awareness, shifting behaviors, or reducing environmental impact or harm? If you have already implemented it, what difference have you made so far? What is the impact your initiative has had¡, and/or what impact do you envision having in the future?
The impact of our initiative lies in making climate awareness visible, relevant, and achievable through everyday participation in sport. By embedding environmental thinking into regular physical activity, participants begin to recognise how small, practical choices can reduce environmental harm without adding pressure or complexity to their lives. We expect the project to increase confidence and agency around climate-conscious behaviour. Participants are supported to notice and question waste in sporting contexts, rethink how they travel to activities, and take greater care in how shared resources are used. These shifts are subtle but meaningful, particularly for individuals who have previously felt disconnected from environmental conversations. Through our existing sports and wellbeing programmes, we have already observed positive early indicators. Participants show increased willingness to use local spaces, attend sessions without relying on car travel, and engage in conversations about sustainability when these topics are introduced in a practical, non-judgemental way. Many express that this is the first time environmental issues have felt relevant to their daily routines. Looking ahead, we envision a growing ripple effect. As participants embed these habits, they influence peers, families, and wider community norms around low-impact activity. In the longer term, the initiative aims to demonstrate that inclusive, community-led sport can play a role in climate action by reducing waste, encouraging active lifestyles, and shifting perceptions of who environmental initiatives are for. This approach supports lasting change by aligning environmental responsibility with wellbeing, participation, and everyday life.
Innovation: What is different about your initiative compared to other solutions that are already out there? How is your approach original and innovative?
What makes our initiative innovative is not a new technology or a large-scale system, but a shift in where and how climate action happens. Environmental best practice in sport is usually developed by large institutions and professional organisations. Our initiative translates these ideas into small, community-led settings and makes them accessible to people who are rarely reached by climate or environmental programmes. The innovation lies in embedding climate awareness into trusted, existing wellbeing activity rather than creating a separate environmental project. Participants are not asked to opt into “climate action” explicitly. Instead, sustainability is experienced through routine participation in aerobics and football, making behaviour change feel natural rather than educational or directive. Our approach is also preventative and relational. By working with communities that experience social, cultural, or economic barriers, we address environmental exclusion directly. Climate awareness is introduced in ways that respect cultural context, lived experience, and varying levels of confidence, rather than relying on one-size-fits-all messaging. Another key difference is the emphasis on co-creation at a micro level. Small decisions around equipment use, session design, and travel are shaped collectively with participants, allowing innovation to emerge from within the group rather than being imposed externally. In this way, the initiative offers a replicable model for how grassroots sport can support climate awareness and sustainable behaviour, demonstrating that meaningful environmental action does not need to start with large systems, but can begin with everyday community practice.
Roles and Responsibilities: Describe how responsibilities are shared among your team or partners.
Responsibilities are shared across a small, collaborative team. Programme leads oversee planning, delivery, and safeguarding, ensuring sessions are safe, inclusive, and aligned with wellbeing and environmental aims. Coaches and facilitators lead the physical activity and model low-impact, sustainable practice during sessions. Community members and participants contribute through feedback, peer support, and shared decision-making around how activities are run. Strategic oversight and partnerships are coordinated by Chizuk’s leadership team, ensuring learning is captured and the project remains responsive to community needs.
Viability and Scalability: How are you setting your organization up for success, and what is your plan to ensure operational sustainability of your solution and its impact? What are your ideas for scaling your initiative to the next level?
We are setting the organisation up for success by building on existing infrastructure, trusted relationships, and delivery experience rather than creating something new from scratch. The initiative is integrated into our current sports and wellbeing programmes, allowing us to use established staff, venues, safeguarding processes, and community engagement channels. This keeps costs low, delivery realistic, and impact sustainable beyond the funding period. Operational sustainability is supported through a mixed funding approach, combining grants, partnerships, and modest participant contributions where appropriate. Learning from the project is documented and used to strengthen future funding applications and partnerships, ensuring the approach can continue and evolve. The model is intentionally simple and replicable. Because it relies on local spaces, basic equipment, and adaptable facilitation rather than specialist infrastructure, it can be scaled to other groups, age ranges, or locations with minimal additional cost. Future scaling will focus on training facilitators, sharing learning across community partners, and embedding the approach into other physical activity programmes delivered by Chizuk. By keeping the model flexible, low-cost, and community-led, we ensure both immediate viability and long-term potential for growth and wider impact.
Upcoming Milestones: Please provide an overview of the milestones that are required for your initiative to come to fruition/ to grow.
Our first milestone is to confirm the practical foundations of delivery. This includes finalising session formats, locations, schedules, and internal guidance so that everyone involved is clear on roles, expectations, and how climate awareness is integrated into day-to-day activity. We will then focus on engaging participants through our existing programmes and community networks. This stage is about ensuring the right people are involved from the outset and that sessions are accessible, inclusive, and well attended. Once delivery begins, the priority will be consistency and quality. Regular aerobics and football sessions will run as planned, with facilitators modelling low-impact practice and encouraging participation in a way that feels natural and sustainable. Alongside delivery, we will build in regular moments for reflection and learning. Feedback from participants and facilitators will be reviewed on an ongoing basis so the programme can adapt and improve as it develops. Towards the later stages, we will step back to review what has worked well, capture learning, and assess the wider potential of the approach. This will inform decisions about continuation, funding, and how the initiative could be extended to other groups or locations.
Capacity-Building Participation and Support Funding: If you were to make it as a finalist, you will be required to participate in an 8-week capacity building programme. If funding/ cost is a barrier to your participation, we may be able to offer up to 10,000 GBP of grant money available to support you. Please break down below, if it is the case, what costs you would incur and you would need covered. (Please note that there are restrictions on how the grant money may be used; please refer to the T&Cs for further details (LINK).
To participate fully in the 8-week capacity-building programme, we would need support to cover the following costs, which would otherwise be a barrier due to limited unrestricted funds: Staff time / backfill – £5,200 Approx. 2 days per week of staff or freelance capacity to attend sessions, complete programme tasks, and embed learning into organisational systems and project delivery. Programme coordination and learning integration – £2,000 Time to reflect on learning, adapt policies and delivery models, document changes, and share learning internally and with partners. Travel and participation costs – £800 Local travel to attend in-person sessions, meetings, or events linked to the capacity-building programme. Operational and administrative support – £1,200 Contribution to core costs such as IT, communications, reporting, and admin needed to support participation and follow-up work. Implementation tools and resources – £800 Small costs for materials, resources, or tools required to apply learning practically within our programmes. Total potential support required: £10,000 This support would enable meaningful participation in the programme and ensure learning is embedded in a way that strengthens long-term impact and sustainability.
