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
Heat Safe Summer Sport
Lead Organization Name
London Borough of Lambeth – Libraries and Archives Service
My initiative is designed for and delivered in London
1
Year that you started/ registered your organisation
1965
Website URL(s) or Social Media Handles
https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/libraries
Initiative Stage
Pilot-Stage (The first activities have happened, and you have proof of concept)
Sectors/Themes: What topic does your project most directly relate to?
Children & Youth
Initiative Summary: Describe your initiative in one sentence
HeatSafe Summer Sport is creating a climate-resilient youth wellbeing model that connects schools, libraries, leisure centres and community partners to support young people during periods of extreme heat.
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?
Extreme heat is becoming more frequent and intense in London, creating risks to young people's health, wellbeing and ability to stay active. While much attention focuses on older adults and very young children, young people aged 10–14 are often overlooked despite participating in sport and outdoor activities during hot weather, sometimes without understanding the risks of dehydration, overheating and poor air quality. In West Norwood and across Lambeth, many young people rely on schools, libraries, leisure centres and community spaces for recreation and support. However, these services are often planned separately and are not consistently designed to help young people remain active and safe during periods of extreme heat. The impact extends beyond physical activity, affecting family wellbeing, access to community spaces and community resilience during heatwaves. Through engagement with schools, youth groups, libraries, Active Lambeth and partners, we have identified a need for a more joined-up, climate-adaptive approach. During the development phase, HeatSafe Summer Sport is working with young people, schools, libraries, leisure centres and health partners to co-design activities, safe spaces and heat-aware messaging that can inform future delivery. The initiative is rooted in direct work with local young people, ensuring their experiences shape the model.
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?
HeatSafe Summer Sport uses sport and physical activity as a practical tool for climate adaptation. The initiative emerged from youth wellbeing work in Lambeth libraries and schools, where young people repeatedly raised concerns about staying cool, safe and active during hot weather. The “aha” moment came from recognising that climate resilience for young people must be built into everyday community activities, not treated as a separate issue. During the 2026 development phase, young people are helping co-design activities, messaging and delivery through schools, youth groups, libraries and community partners. The project is testing how schools, libraries, leisure centres and health partners can work together to provide safe, trusted and climate-adaptive spaces for young people during periods of extreme heat. Through pilot activities and co-design workshops, we are exploring approaches such as hydration routines, rest breaks, indoor and shaded spaces, flexible timings and climate-aware coaching. Libraries are being tested as trusted community hubs, providing cool and accessible spaces for movement, play and social connection. The learning gathered during the development phase will inform wider programme delivery from 2027 onwards. By embedding climate awareness into sport and community activity, the initiative aims to support behaviour change, strengthen resilience and help young people remain active, connected and safe as temperatures continue to rise. The project is also exploring how trusted messengers such as teachers, sports coaches, health professionals and community leaders can support behaviour change through existing community touch points including schools, libraries, sports sessions and community events
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 are central to the design, testing and ongoing development of HeatSafe Summer Sport. The initiative is rooted in youth co-design through schools, Youth Wellbeing Committees, community surveys and pilot workshops. More than 70 young people aged 10–14 have already contributed insight on staying safe, active and connected during periods of extreme heat, directly shaping programme priorities. Young people help influence: • Activity types and formats • Preferred settings, including schools, libraries and leisure centres • Heat-safe messaging and communication channels • Evaluation questions and feedback methods During the development phase, we are working with young people from Dunraven, Elmgreen and Grove Adventure Playground through co-design and pilot testing sessions, helping us understand what activities, spaces and support they find most engaging, accessible and effective during hot weather. Young people are not only helping identify challenges but are actively shaping activities, communication approaches, trusted community locations and the criteria we will use to measure success. The wider community is engaged through libraries, schools, Active Lambeth, health partners, youth organisations and community groups. Rather than delivering a programme for young people, we are building it with them, ensuring lived experience, local knowledge and community assets shape the solution from the outset. This shared ownership approach builds trust, relevance and long-term community capacity to adapt to climate change.
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 initiative has already demonstrated strong early impact through youth engagement, co-design and pilot testing. More than 70 young people have contributed insight through surveys, Youth Wellbeing Committees and workshops, highlighting the importance of safe, cool and accessible spaces for staying active during hot weather. During the 2026 development phase, we are testing activities, gathering feedback and building evidence on what helps young people remain active, safe and engaged during periods of extreme heat. Through co-design workshops and pilot sessions across schools, libraries, leisure centres and community settings, we are identifying effective activities, trusted spaces, communication channels and heat-safe behaviours. The development phase will also strengthen partnerships between young people, schools, libraries, Active Lambeth, health partners and community organisations, creating the foundations for future delivery. In the longer term, HeatSafe Summer Sport aims to create a replicable model for climate-resilient youth activity, helping schools, libraries, leisure providers and health partners adapt their programmes and spaces to a changing climate. Success will be measured through participation, behaviour change, partner engagement and the adoption of heat-safe practices across community settings. By strengthening collaboration between young people, community organisations and public services, the initiative seeks to create lasting changes in how communities support youth wellbeing and physical activity during extreme weather. The development phase is also helping identify behaviour changes we want to influence, including hydration, heat awareness, use of cool community spaces and confidence in adapting activity during extreme weather.
Innovation: What is different about your initiative compared to other solutions that are already out there? How is your approach original and innovative?
HeatSafe Summer Sport is innovative because it moves beyond traditional sport delivery and treats physical activity as a tool for climate adaptation, resilience and wellbeing. Rather than responding to heatwaves as isolated events, the initiative explores how communities can adapt everyday activities, spaces and services to a changing climate. Key innovations include: • Youth co-design and pilot testing • Libraries used as climate-resilient community hubs • Climate-aware sport and activity models • Integration of health, leisure, education and community sectors • Youth-informed heat-safe messaging and behaviour change • Testing a whole-system approach across schools, libraries, leisure centres and community organisations The innovation is not a single activity, but the way different sectors are brought together around a shared challenge. The project explores how trusted community spaces can support young people to stay active, safe and connected during periods of extreme heat. By focusing on prevention, adaptation and community resilience, HeatSafe Summer Sport seeks to shift how organisations plan summer activities, how young people think about heat risk, and how communities respond to the growing impacts of climate change. The model is designed to be transferable and scalable across other urban communities facing similar challenges.
Roles and Responsibilities: Describe how responsibilities are shared among your team or partners.
Lambeth Libraries (Lead Applicant) Overall programme leadership and coordination. Responsible for community engagement, youth co-design, partnership management, safeguarding oversight and the use of library spaces as trusted, climate-resilient community hubs. Lambeth Libraries oversee reporting, learning dissemination and alignment with wider Children and Young People wellbeing priorities. Active Lambeth (Core Delivery Partner) A key delivery partner already supporting the development phase through co-design workshops, pilot testing and activity planning. Active Lambeth contributes leisure expertise, facilities, operational support and insight into climate-adaptive sport and physical activity delivery. Climate Change & Sustainability Team (London Borough of Lambeth) An active strategic partner providing expertise on climate resilience, heat-risk adaptation and systems change. The team helps shape the wider vision, supports alignment with borough climate priorities and facilitates links with relevant partners and networks. Public Health / HDRC (HEART) and Research Partners Supporting the development of the monitoring, evaluation and learning framework, helping identify outcomes, behaviour-change measures and opportunities for evidence gathering and future scaling. NHS / Primary Care Network (including HBD PCN) Providing health insight, trusted messaging and practitioner perspectives to support heat-health awareness, family engagement and alignment with local Children and Young People priorities. Schools and Youth Partners (including Dunraven, Elmgreen and Grove Adventure Playground) Already supporting youth engagement, co-design and pilot testing activities. Young people play a central role in shaping activities, preferred settings, heat-safe messaging and programme priorities through surveys, workshops and Youth Wellbeing Committees. Community and Voluntary Sector Partners Provide local knowledge, trusted relationships and community insight, helping ensure the model reflects local needs and is accessible to young people and families. The initiative is built around shared ownership, with young people, community organisations and public services working together to design, test and refine a climate-resilient model for future delivery and scaling from 2027 onwards.
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 initiative is being built on existing community infrastructure, trusted partnerships and established delivery systems, helping ensure long-term viability. Libraries, leisure centres, schools and community organisations already act as local anchors, while Active Lambeth provides expertise in sport and physical activity delivery. The 2026 development phase is focused on building the evidence base, strengthening partnerships, testing activities and refining a scalable delivery model. We are already working with schools, youth organisations, climate and health partners to ensure the model reflects local needs and can be embedded within existing services before wider expansion. Sustainability will be supported through alignment with Lambeth’s wider Children and Young People, climate resilience, public health and summer activity priorities. The model is designed to complement existing provision rather than create a standalone programme. Future growth could include: • Expansion to additional libraries, leisure centres and community hubs • Development of a HeatSafe toolkit and resources • Training young people and practitioners as HeatSafe ambassadors • Sharing learning with other boroughs and partners facing similar climate challenges The long-term ambition is to embed a transferable model that helps communities adapt youth activity and wellbeing provision to extreme heat
Upcoming Milestones: Please provide an overview of the milestones that are required for your initiative to come to fruition/ to grow.
Spring–Summer 2026: Youth engagement, co-design workshops and pilot testing through schools, libraries, leisure centres and community partners. Gather insight on activities, trusted spaces, heat-safe behaviours and communication approaches. Strengthen partnerships with Active Lambeth, schools, climate, health and community partners. Summer–Autumn 2026: Refine the HeatSafe model using learning from pilot activities. Develop the evaluation framework, partnership agreements, delivery approach and HeatSafe toolkit. Identify opportunities for future funding and scaling. Winter 2026–Spring 2027: Finalise programme design, delivery plans, staff training, safeguarding arrangements and monitoring processes. Confirm venues, partners and engagement pathways. Summer 2027: Launch and deliver the HeatSafe Summer Sport programme across community, library and leisure settings, supported by ongoing monitoring, evaluation and youth feedback. Autumn 2027: Review impact, share learning and explore opportunities for wider adoption across Lambeth and other communities facing similar climate challenges.
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).
The development funding will support the 2026 refinement and testing phase of HeatSafe Summer Sport, enabling us to apply learning from the capacity-building programme and strengthen the model ahead of future delivery. Funding will support: • Staff time for project coordination, partnership development and programme refinement • Youth engagement, co-design workshops and pilot testing activities • Participation support, refreshments and recognition for young people involved in co-design • Community partner and venue support where appropriate • Monitoring, evaluation and evidence gathering • Travel, materials and operational costs associated with development activities This investment will enable us to test ideas, strengthen partnerships, gather evidence and refine a scalable climate-resilient model for future delivery and growth from 2027 onwards.
Now that you've explored what it truly means to put young people at the centre, how are you designing your initiative so that young people are genuine co-leaders and co-creators of the initiative?
Young people are at the centre of HeatSafe Summer Sport as co-creators of the model, not simply participants in activities. Through Youth Wellbeing Committees, school partnerships, community surveys and co-design workshops, young people are helping define the problems we focus on, identify barriers to participation during extreme heat, and shape the activities, environments, messaging and success measures that guide the initiative. During the 2026 development phase, young people from schools and community organisations are actively testing ideas, contributing lived experience, and helping refine what a heat-safe, engaging and accessible programme should look like. Their insight is directly influencing decisions about delivery settings, communication approaches, heat-safe behaviours, evaluation methods and future priorities. We are also developing opportunities for young people to act as peer researchers, ambassadors and co-facilitators, gathering insight from their peers, contributing to analysis and helping communicate findings to partners. This moves their role beyond consultation towards shared ownership of programme development. Our long-term ambition is that young people help shape not only activities, but also how schools, libraries, leisure services and community organisations respond to extreme heat. By embedding youth voice throughout design, testing, evaluation and future scale-up, HeatSafe Summer Sport aims to create a model that is designed with young people, informed by lived experience, and accountable to the communities it serves.
What partnerships and collaborations are most critical to delivering and sustaining your initiative and how are you building/ plan to build them?
HeatSafe Summer Sport depends on collaboration across sectors because no single organisation can address the interconnected challenges of climate resilience, youth wellbeing and physical activity alone. Our most critical partnerships are with young people, schools, libraries, leisure providers, health partners, climate specialists and community organisations. Young people are central co-creators, helping shape priorities, activities, messaging and evaluation. Schools and youth organisations support engagement and co-design. Lambeth Libraries provide trusted community spaces and coordinate partnerships. Active Lambeth contributes expertise in physical activity and leisure provision. Climate Change and Sustainability colleagues help ensure the initiative supports wider climate adaptation goals, while health and research partners provide insight into heat-health behaviours, wellbeing outcomes and evaluation. During the 2026 development phase, we are strengthening these relationships through co-design workshops, pilot testing, stakeholder engagement and shared learning. Rather than developing a programme and asking partners to support it later, partners are helping shape the model from the outset. We are also exploring how trusted messengers, including teachers, sports coaches, health professionals and community leaders, can support behaviour change through existing community touch points. Our long-term ambition is to create a coordinated partnership network that embeds heat-safe approaches within existing community services and supports wider adoption across Lambeth and beyond.
What are you measuring, how are you measuring it, and what does the data tell you so far (quantitative and qualitative)?
During the 2026 development phase, we are measuring both participation outcomes and systems-change indicators. This includes the number of young people engaged, levels of participation, heat-health awareness, preferred activity settings, confidence in staying active during hot weather, and the strength of partnerships being developed across schools, libraries, leisure centres and community organisations. Data is being collected through surveys, co-design workshops, pilot sessions, attendance records, observation, facilitator notes and participant feedback. We are also gathering qualitative insight from schools, youth organisations, Active Lambeth and community partners to understand barriers, opportunities and behavioural change. To date, more than 70 young people have contributed through surveys, Youth Wellbeing Committees, school engagement and pilot activities. Early findings suggest that young people value cool, safe and accessible spaces, particularly libraries, leisure centres and community venues. Participants consistently identified hydration, shade, indoor activities and flexible session formats as important factors influencing participation during periods of extreme heat. We are also seeing evidence of systems change emerging through new partnerships between libraries, schools, leisure services, climate resilience colleagues and community organisations. These relationships are helping create a more joined-up approach to youth wellbeing, climate adaptation and physical activity. The development phase is helping us refine activities, heat-safe messaging, delivery models and evaluation measures ahead of wider implementation, while building evidence for future scale and sustainability.
Long-term impact: what lasting systems change are you seeking to create and how will you know when it has happened?
The long-term systems change we are seeking is a shift from fragmented services to a coordinated, climate-responsive system that supports young people to stay active, healthy and safe during periods of extreme heat. Today, schools, leisure providers, libraries, health services and community organisations often operate separately, with heat-health guidance and climate resilience not consistently embedded within youth activity provision. HeatSafe Summer Sport aims to strengthen the connections between these sectors, creating a shared approach to youth wellbeing, physical activity and climate adaptation. A key part of this vision is establishing libraries as trusted climate-resilience hubs, providing accessible community spaces where information, support, activities and trusted messaging can be shared across generations. Through partnerships with schools, health professionals, sports providers, community organisations and young people themselves, libraries can help connect communities to practical heat-safe behaviours and resilience support. Success in five to ten years would mean that climate-adaptive approaches are embedded within existing services, organisations routinely work together around youth wellbeing and heat resilience, and young people are recognised as active partners in shaping solutions. We would expect to see heat-safe practices, trusted community messaging and coordinated responses to extreme weather becoming part of everyday service delivery. If HeatSafe Summer Sport disappeared tomorrow, success would mean that the partnerships, behaviours, practices and ways of working it helped create would continue without it. The system itself would have changed.
Is there anything else you'd like to share with us that you were not able to share in previous questions?
One of the most valuable lessons from the development and capacity-building process has been recognising that HeatSafe Summer Sport is not simply about delivering activities during hot weather. It is about strengthening the relationships, community assets and systems that help young people and communities adapt to a changing climate. Through engagement with young people, schools, libraries, Active Lambeth, climate specialists, health partners and community organisations, our thinking has evolved from a programme-based approach towards a wider systems-change model. We increasingly see libraries as trusted community resilience hubs, connecting information, people, services and opportunities for action. The development phase has also reinforced the importance of youth leadership, intergenerational engagement and trusted community touch points in influencing behaviour change. These insights will continue to shape the initiative as it develops. We believe the challenge presents an opportunity not only to support young people during periods of extreme heat, but also to explore how communities can work together to build long-term resilience, wellbeing and climate adaptation from the ground up.
