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
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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
LENS: London Evidence Network through Sport
Lead Organization Name
Common Purpose Charitable Trust
My initiative is designed for and delivered in London
1
Year that you started/ registered your organisation
1989
Website URL(s) or Social Media Handles
www.commonpurpose.org
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?
Civic Engagement
Initiative Summary: Describe your initiative in one sentence
LENS: The London Evidence Network through Sport creates London’s first youth-led climate intelligence network - embedding sport-based climate action nodes in communities through intergenerational design. Over 12 weeks, 30 young people (11–18) and 30 adults work in parallel. Youth generate hyperlocal climate evidence through sport (football, rowing, cycling, athletics); adults map the systems youth must navigate. Together, they co-create practical climate solutions. Evidence serves two audiences: Councils gain hyperlocal data to allocate resources effectively; clubs get actionable insights immediately. Traditional sources provide neither. Clubs apply findings fast: adapting sessions (heat protocols, flood response) and reducing impact (active travel, zero-waste events, renewable energy advocacy). Councils use aggregated patterns to guide infrastructure investment that addresses climate change. Solutions embed through small, cascading changes across thousands of sessions - until the narrative becomes this is just how we play sport. Youth lead storytelling enables youth to control their narrative via film, audio, and social content, reframing themselves as intelligence generators, not climate affected-youth. By combining intergenerational collaboration, youth-led evidence, and systems change, LENS transforms sport clubs into permanent climate intelligence hubs—not just recreational spaces.
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?
Climate change impacts London's youth sport unevenly. In Newham and Southwark, pitches flood, tracks overheat, cycling routes expose young people to pollution. Raising heart rates, slowing recovery, dropping participation. In Richmond, tree cover produces different outcomes for the same sports. Girls face compounded barriers: worse facilities, hotter time slots. Sport also contributes to climate change through car travel and grid energy. Yet clubs lack data to address either challenge. London lacks hyperlocal data connecting climate to youth sport. Councils have weather stations but not microclimate insight; air monitors but not cyclists' actual routes; emissions targets but no way to engage youth in mitigation. Youth consultations gather views but offer no institutional access. Adult-led programmes miss lived experience. Awareness builds consciousness but not systems capacity. Young people hold embodied climate intelligence - flooding patterns, route safety, peer motivation but it stays uncaptured. Adults hold institutional knowledge - budgets, processes, decision points - but lack hyperlocal data. Nothing connects them. Common Purpose's 35 years brokering cross-boundary leadership and London networks position us to build London's first youth-led climate intelligence network through community sport. Connecting embodied knowledge with institutional access to generate evidence
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?
LENS builds climate intelligence infrastructure through sport, not youth development. Its distinctive feature: intergenerational design integrating youth embodied with adult institutional knowledge across 12 weeks. WEEKS 1-4: Evidence Generation - Youth experience climate inequality in their bodies while mapping sport's climate contributions. Rowing Thames reveals water warming. Pitch swaps between Newham and Richmond capture heat differences via wearables. Cycling maps air quality on routes. They audit clubs' footprint, travel, plastics, energy. WEEKS 5-6: Parallel Systems Intelligence - YOUTH shadow facilities managers on budget trade-offs, interview coaches on psychological safety, observe mixed-gender teams, access Olympic facilities. Extracting leadership principles for climate solutions. ADULTS map institutional systems: budgets, procurement, council contacts, energy becoming "System Guides" with contacts, process maps, budget intelligence. WEEK 7: Convergence Sprint - Mixed-age teams combine youth climate knowledge + sport leadership principles + adults' institutional maps, prototyping solutions through sport in 180 minute sprints. Youth know what needs solving; adults know how to make it happen. WEEKS 8-12: Evidence and Legacy - Teams evaluate, document evidence, capture video, and build a challenge library - a growing resource of replicable climate-sport interventions. CLUBS use findings for adaptation (scheduling, hydration) and mitigation (walking buses, zero-waste, renewables). COUNCILS use aggregated patterns for investment (shading, cycle lanes, energy). Embedding intelligence within clubs creates permanent climate action nodes. Generating evidence, informing policy, reducing emissions. Small changes normalized until they're how we do 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 are co-creators, data generators, narrative shapers, and system actors. Not beneficiaries or climate affected-youth. The intergenerational model positions youth and adults as equal contributors: youth bring embodied climate intelligence (flooding, air quality, heat effects, peer motivation); adults bring institutional intelligence (budgets, decision-makers, approvals, energy procurement). Neither generates evidence or solutions alone. Youth lead evidence generation - testing water quality while rowing, mapping pollution on cycle routes with monitors, facilitating borough pitch swaps with wearables, auditing travel and waste, prototyping zero-waste tournaments, designing equipment-sharing systems. Experiments become practice: a walking bus becomes how 50 participants travel; zero-waste events become the club norm; equipment sharing becomes routine. Youth train peer clubs and mentor newcomers through cascade delivery. Adults act as "System Guides". Opening doors to facilities managers, officials, funders; explaining processes; providing institutional maps but never designing solutions or speaking for youth. Access and insight, not authority. Through film, audio, and social content, youth control their narratives. Capturing heat differences between boroughs, pride in walking buses eliminating car trips, confidence from advocating for solar panels. These reposition young people from climate victims to intelligence generators and solution architects. Clubs, youth organisations, and councils co-host activities ensuring local relevance. Clubs become evidence partners, testing grounds, and cascade nodes. The result: legitimacy, mutual respect, systems change, and youth sport repositioned from recreational service to climate intelligence infrastructure.
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?
First year delivery: a) 720 participant-weeks of hyperlocal climate data (60 participants x 12 weeks) b) 60 trained climate leaders (30 youth, 30 adults) with systems literacy c) 4-6 tested adaptation and mitigation models co-created by mixed-age teams d) Open-source Challenge Library for all London clubs e) 20 permanent climate action nodes generating ongoing evidence Evidence serves dual audiences: CLUBS act on data within weeks. Adaptation: a rowing club shifts to mornings after detecting temperature spikes; athletics introduces hydration protocols from recovery data. Mitigation: a football club's walking bus eliminates 24 car trips weekly; a cycling club removes 500+ plastics annually; a rowing club uses LENS data to advocate for solar panels. COUNCILS use aggregated patterns for investment. Adaptation: which pitches to shade, routes needing air quality intervention, scheduling during heatwaves (10,000+ affected). Mitigation: data showing 40% would cycle with protected lanes justifies £50k investment, enabling 200+ young people to replace car trips. 20,000+ eliminated annually. Through cascade, 20 clubs engage 500+ participants in 12 months. Walking buses cut hundreds of car trips weekly; zero-waste removes thousands of plastics annually; equipment sharing cuts manufacturing demand; youth advocacy pushes facilities toward renewables. One club inspires five peers - reductions compound across 100+ clubs. Behaviours normalize through repetition: within 6 months, walking is standard, zero-waste default, sharing routine. By Year 2, 100 clubs reach 2,000+ participants as climate intelligence hubs. Impact evidenced through adoption rates, participation growth, emissions changes, borough replication, and youth evidence informing infrastructure investment.
Innovation: What is different about your initiative compared to other solutions that are already out there? How is your approach original and innovative?
LENS treats sport as climate intelligence infrastructure. Repositioning youth sport from recreational service to evidence that both responds to and addresses climate change. Traditional programmes consult youth or teach science. LENS positions young people as intelligence generators whose embodied knowledge combines with adult institutional knowledge to create evidence councils and clubs cannot access otherwise. Data is credible: professional-grade wearables, methodology co-designed with council climate teams, and System Guides - facilities managers, council officers - vouching for rigor. What makes this infrastructure: Evidence at multiple scales: clubs act immediately (scheduling, active travel, zero-waste); councils use aggregated patterns for investment. Clubs don't wait for policy change. Both adaptation and mitigation: youth don't just respond to impacts, they reduce emissions, positioning clubs as active agents not victims. Sport as leadership curriculum: youth access operations behind the scenes: shadowing facilities managers, interviewing coaches on psychological safety, accessing Olympic facilities. Access to sport as a system makes this insight-driven not generic engagement. Sport as testing ground: ideas are prototyped live, not proposed in meetings. A walking bus is tested 4 weeks with real feedback. Structural intergenerational collaboration: parallel tracks converge so lived experience and institutional access shape solutions. Youth control narratives through film and social content. Solutions embed through repetition until standard. Clubs become permanent hubs generating evidence, informing policy, reducing emissions. Not youth development. London's climate intelligence network built through sport.
Roles and Responsibilities: Describe how responsibilities are shared among your team or partners.
Common Purpose leads programme design, facilitation, intergenerational systems methodology, evaluation, and partnerships. Sport partners (clubs, facilities, governing bodies) provide access to facilities, participants, and testing environments; commit to acting on participant-generated evidence. Community and youth organisations support recruitment, safeguarding, and targeted outreach to underrepresented groups. We will be working closely with Barnardo's here. Strategic partners contribute technology (wearables, data platforms)(we are in conversations with google), communications support (film/audio production for youth-led storytelling), and scaling expertise. Our partner Bak Creative Communications will support us here. Youth participants generate climate evidence for both adaptation and mitigation, lead solution design, prototype interventions, deliver cascade training, control narrative production through film and social content. Adult participants map institutional systems, provide access to decision-makers, offer navigational support, mentor without displacing youth leadership. Borough councils co-host activities, provide access to officials and processes, commit to considering participant-generated evidence in infrastructure planning and climate investment decisions.
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?
Designed as permanent infrastructure through modular delivery, low-cost replication, and integration into existing sport systems. Traditional consultancy costs £200k+ for borough studies producing abstract data. LENS delivers hyperlocal evidence, 60 leaders, 20 permanent nodes and replicable methodology for £100k - clubs generate intelligence beyond funding. Open-source Challenge Library enables any club to adopt challenges independently, with youth-led documentary shorts demonstrating solutions. Clubs replicate seeing transformation, not instructions. Intergenerational cascade: each cohort trains the next, self-perpetuating as clubs embed evidence generation and mitigation into operations. Embedded in existing clubs and borough networks, surviving funding transitions. Revenue: sport governing bodies (adaptation data), councils (neighbourhood evidence), climate funders (youth-led mitigation), corporate sponsors. Building partnerships with borough climate teams, London Sport, and university researchers. Year 1: 20 clubs, 4 boroughs. Year 2: 100 clubs citywide. Year 3: UK cities via Common Purpose's national network. Each club becomes a permanent climate action node - generating evidence, driving behaviour change, reducing emissions - growing through peer replication. Infrastructure design, not programme delivery. Built to outlive funding and scale nationally.
Upcoming Milestones: Please provide an overview of the milestones that are required for your initiative to come to fruition/ to grow.
Months 1-2: Partner confirmation (sport clubs, borough councils, youth organisations) and recruitment (60 participants: 30 youth, 30 adults) Months 3-4: Phase 1 delivery. Evidence generation through sport for both adaptation (rowing Thames measuring water warming, postcode pitch swaps capturing heat differences) and mitigation (mapping current travel patterns, auditing club waste and energy use) Month 5: Phase 2 delivery. Leadership principles and systems intelligence (parallel youth-adult tracks); Design Sprint (mixed-age teams prototype solutions through live sport); External validation (peer clubs test interventions) Months 6-9: Phase 3 delivery. Cascade rollout (each team trains 5 clubs in both adaptation and mitigation approaches) and Challenge Library launch (open-source resource live and accessible) Months 10-12: Evaluation and impact documentation (film/audio capture of youth narratives showing transformation from climate victims to intelligence generators, evidence of council use, measurable emissions reductions from mitigation behaviors), and scale planning (partnership development for Years 2-3)
