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
The Green Games
Lead Organization Name
The Change Foundation
My initiative is designed for and delivered in London
1
Year that you started/ registered your organisation
1981
Website URL(s) or Social Media Handles
www.changefoundation.co.uk
Initiative Stage
Idea (You have a solid concept and are hoping to get started in the future)
Sectors/Themes: What topic does your project most directly relate to?
Environment & Sustainability
Initiative Summary: Describe your initiative in one sentence
The Green Games uses sport as an interactive platform for climate learning and climate action for young people from underserved, climate-vulnerable communities.
Challenge Focus: What topic does your initiative most directly relate to?
Climate action through awareness and engagement
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?
Young people from underserved, climate-vulnerable communities already experience the impacts of the climate crisis on their ability to play, move and connect. Extreme heat, flooding, poor air quality, damaged pitches, rising costs and unsafe public spaces are limiting access to sport and physical activity, exacerbating existing inequalities in health, wellbeing and social connection. At the same time, many young people feel disconnected from climate conversations, lack climate literacy, and are rarely engaged in meaningful action that feels relevant. Sport and movement remains one of the most powerful entry points for engaging marginalised young people. However, they are rarely used as a platform for climate education, and opportunities for young people to understand and respond to climate challenges through movement-based learning are limited. There is also a gap in culturally relevant, accessible approaches that empower young people to become climate leaders in their communities. The Green Games addresses this gap by using sport as a practical, engaging and inclusive tool to build climate awareness, strengthen resilience, and inspire collective action. It targets young people who are often excluded from traditional environmental education, ensuring they are not only informed but empowered to shape a healthier, more sustainable future for themselves and their communities
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?
The Green Games is an innovative, sport-based learning model that translates climate concepts into interactive physical activities and games. Workshops adapt familiar sports (e.g. football, cricket, basketball, athletics) to demonstrate climate themes such as heat stress, flooding, air pollution, resource scarcity and sustainability. For example, modified rules simulate extreme weather conditions, while team challenges explore waste reduction, energy use and community action. The approach combines physical activity, experiential learning and facilitated reflection, ensuring young people build climate literacy alongside physical, social and emotional skills. Sessions are delivered by trained Social Change Coaches with lived experience, supported by climate educators and community partners. Each workshop includes practical actions young people can take in their homes, schools and clubs, linking sport settings to wider environmental responsibility. The programme also pilots climate-resilient sport practices, such as low-waste equipment use, sustainable transport prompts, and adapting sessions for heat or air quality risks. This dual focus on awareness and adaptation aligns directly with the Challenge priorities. Green Games is designed to be scalable: sessions are modular, coach-friendly, and adaptable to multiple sports and settings. A toolkit and training package will enable schools, community clubs and youth organisations to replicate the model across London and beyond. As a grassroots sports for social change charity for over 40 years, we know the power of sport and community, and the dangers of climate change. As the WEF’s Sports for People and Planet report highlighted, grassroot sports is the most socially valuable and environmentally sustainable part of sport.
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?
Young people will be at the centre of the Green Games design and delivery. We will co-create activities with young participants through workshops, youth advisory groups and pilot sessions, ensuring the content reflects their lived experiences of climate impacts and resonates culturally and locally. Youth ambassadors will help shape messaging, test activities, and support peer delivery. Participants will not only learn about climate change but will be supported to take action, such as leading climate-themed sports events, transforming local green spaces, and influencing their clubs and schools to adopt more sustainable practices. This peer-led model builds leadership, confidence and community ownership. We will prioritise engagement with marginalised young people, including those affected by poverty, racial inequity, disability and exclusion from mainstream sport. Many of these marginalised young people find that their experiences with climate change are simultaneously exacerbated and ignored due to their specific vulnerabilities. Coaches with lived experience will act as relatable role models, fostering trust and authentic engagement, while supporting them to challenge the climate action status quo. Ongoing feedback loops (peer discussions, feedback meet ups, and reflective conversations) will ensure continuous learning and adaptation. Young people will be recognised as co-creators and changemakers, with opportunities to showcase their work to local stakeholders and intergenerational audiences, amplifying their voices and driving wider community-level climate action through a domino effect.
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 Green Games tackles a key barrier to youth climate engagement: many young people, particularly those facing poverty, racial inequity, disability or exclusion from mainstream sport, experience climate change as abstract and disconnected from daily life. By embedding climate learning into sport, we can make climate issues tangible, relevant and actionable. The Green Games will deliver 30 sport-based climate workshops across local community settings, directly engaging 450-600 young people and training 10 Climate Action Coaches. These workshops will be delivered in London boroughs experiencing the worst levels of pollution, such as Brent, Croydon, and Greenwich. The Green Games has the potential to help young people live their lives in a way which enables concrete climate action. We will measure impact through pre- and post-session climate literacy assessments, action tracking and youth feedback, which will feed into our broader evidentiary framework, based on both quantitative and qualitative methods. This allows us to understand the depth, scale, and reach of The Green Games impact. We expect over 75% of participants to demonstrate improved understanding of climate risks and solutions, with at least 40–50% taking measurable climate actions within three months, such as promoting low-waste sports sessions, adopting active travel, or leading sustainability efforts within their clubs or schools. Beyond individual behaviour change, The Green Games will help to create community-level action by creating scalable models that community clubs and schools can embed long-term through a coach-friendly toolkit and training package. Within 5 years, we aim to reach over 3,000 young people across London and embed sustainable practices across community sport.
Innovation: What is different about your initiative compared to other solutions that are already out there? How is your approach original and innovative?
The Green Games is innovative because it turns sport into a sustainable, embedded platform for climate learning and climate action. Rather than using sport simply to attract young people to climate workshops as is traditional, The Green Games uses sport as the teaching method. Climate concepts are learned through physical experience—young people physically feel simulated heat stress, flooding disruption or resource scarcity through adapted games and challenges. This deepens understanding and retention, particularly for young people who are less engaged by traditional classroom approaches. Our innovation lies in modifying the rules of familiar sports to act as climate metaphors. This rule-based simulation translates abstract climate risks into immediate, physical and social challenges. By learning how to adapt and overcome these challenges, they realise their own agency. This allows them to run impactful and effective climate campaigns in their local community. Few climate programmes combine learning and action in such an engaging and relatable manner. Most sport-based environmental initiatives focus on awareness, however, The Green Games shifts sport from passive messaging to active climate pedagogy and system change. We pilot climate-resilient training practices, low-waste delivery models and adaptation protocols that can be embedded into every community sport setting. Through The Green Games, young people actively shape delivery and influence how clubs and schools operate sustainably. Through Youth Ambassadors and co-design workshops, they help set priorities, test practices, and advocate for systemic change. This moves beyond education towards shared governance and long-term culture change, not just in The Green Games, but across the youth sport sector.
Roles and Responsibilities: Describe how responsibilities are shared among your team or partners.
We deliver The Green Games through a collaborative model that combines sport expertise, climate knowledge, and youth leadership. The Green Games will have a Programme Manager who holds overall responsibility for the running of the programme. They will coordinate partners, oversee delivery, and ensure outputs and impact targets are met. They will be assisted by various members of our Leadership Team, such as our Head of Impact, who will assist them on monitoring and evaluation. Our lived experience Social Change Coaches will deliver the workshops. They will facilitate the adapted sport sessions, guide climate reflection discussions, and support young people to design, implement, and manage climate action projects. Coaches also collect attendance data, feedback, and action tracking information. Our coaches will be supported by climate educators who will ensure accuracy and alignment with local climate priorities. They will co-develop workshop content, train coaches and advise on piloting climate-resilient sport practices such as heat adaptation and low-waste delivery. Our community partners will provide venues, assist in recruiting participants, and ensure our workshops remain authentic to local needs and concerns. They will also pilot sustainable practices and support youth-led initiatives within their settings. We will also train 10 Climate Action coaches who will remain embedded in the community to support with the application of The Green Games toolkit and training package. Throughout The Green Games, young people play an active governance role. Through co-design workshops and ambassador roles, they will shape activities, test approaches, support peer delivery and advocate for sustainable changes within their clubs and schools.
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?
The Green Games is designed to be accessible and scalable across sports and settings. By training Climate Action coaches and developing a toolkit and training package, we can ensure we have a long-term sustainable impact after our initial delivery has ended. This train-the-trainer and leave behind model is one of the most sustainable models for sport for development, allowing for long-term support across a broad range of young people. This ensures that scaling up The Green Games is realistic and achievable, as we incorporate it into our core delivery portfolio. We strongly believe that The Green Games has the potential to be scaled and replicated nationally but this would require partnerships with national governing bodies, councils, and community sports networks. It would also need to be supported through statutory funding, philanthropic investment, and long-term partnerships with corporate ESG initiatives. We have extensive experience in curating these types of relationships and partnerships, which we will put to use. We have introduced various modules around social issues to national governing bodies, such as introducing and running a Neurodiversity module to British Fencing. We also aim to take advantage of the increase in climate-focused ESG initiatives to secure long-term corporate financing of The Green Games.
Upcoming Milestones: Please provide an overview of the milestones that are required for your initiative to come to fruition/ to grow.
Phase 1 (Months 1–3): Co-design and Pilot Youth advisory groups and co-design sessions Prototype workshops in 3 communities Phase 2 (Months 4–9): Delivery and Leadership 30 workshops across 10 sites (2 per borough) Youth ambassador programme Climate Action Coach training sessions Phase 3 (Months 10–12): Toolkit and Scale Toolkit and training package publication Partner onboarding Impact reporting and scale strategy
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 ensure that The Green Games is relevant and well-founded, it would be prudent to hire a Climate Action consultant. They would work with our whole team to improve our climate knowledge and ensure our workshops and sports metaphors are grounded in climate reality. Furthermore, they would be able to help develop our own internal climate capacity, allowing us to better support young people with their own campaigns and initiatives. We estimate this would cost £3,000-£5,000.
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