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

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

Empowering London's grassroots football community for climate action: London FA & Football For Future

Lead Organization Name

London Football Association

My initiative is designed for and delivered in London

1

Year that you started/ registered your organisation

2000

Website URL(s) or Social Media Handles

https://www.londonfa.com/, https://footballforfuture.org/

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?

Environment & Sustainability

Initiative Summary: Describe your initiative in one sentence

London FA, in partnership with Football For Future, will deliver a sector-first climate education programme across London’s grassroots football community, equipping young players, coaches, volunteers, and staff with the knowledge, confidence, and practical skills to take meaningful climate action within their clubs, leagues and local 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?

Climate change is increasingly affecting grassroots football in London, from waterlogged pitches and extreme heat to rising facility costs and disrupted participation. Yet young people and community clubs currently lack a structured, football-specific climate action programme embedded across the grassroots game.

Young players, coaches and volunteers often lack the knowledge, confidence, and practical tools to respond to climate risks or engage meaningfully with climate action. Many young players are concerned about climate change but do not see clear pathways to take action in spaces they care about - their football clubs.

Those who will benefit most are young grassroots players across London’s diverse communities, particularly in areas with fewer environmental education opportunities, alongside volunteer-led clubs that need accessible, practical support.

As the governing body for football in London, London FA is embedded in the community, with direct access to young people, clubs, leagues, coaches, and volunteers. Partnering with Football For Future - who bring proven experience delivering football-based climate programmes in Premier League club settings - London FA is uniquely positioned to lead and scale a credible, trusted, and locally relevant climate action programme through football across the capital. 

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?

London FA, with Football For Future, will embed a football-specific climate action programme across grassroots clubs and young players across London. Using football as a trusted, engaging platform, we will build climate awareness, shift behaviours, and enable sustainable participation through interactive workshops, practical club projects, and youth-led initiatives.

The idea grew from seeing climate impacts on pitches, participation, and club operations, alongside the power of football to inspire teamwork, leadership, and action. This originates from the idea that if football can teach teamwork, resilience, and leadership, it can also be a vehicle for climate literacy and local action.

Participants will explore the relationship between football and climate, and be supported to identify and deliver actions that both reduce their club’s environmental impact, and improve their resilience to climate disruption.

The programme will build upon Football For Future’s existing impact resources: including their Football Climate Crashcourse workshop delivered through the Premier League’s Life Skills and Development programme, their Fields For The Future climate adaptation toolkit for community football delivered through US Soccer, and their wider sustainability resources developed with Premier League clubs and professional players.

The course content will be developed through a co-creation process, ensuring it is grounded in the realities of grassroots football in London. By tailoring FFF’s proven resources to grassroots football, we’ll empower young players and staff to embed climate action across their clubs and communities, making football a platform for inclusive, climate-positive change. 

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 central to the design and delivery of this programme, taking a role within this initiative that makes them co-leaders and co-creators of content, delivery, and implementation. This will expand upon existing youth leadership structures that are already established across London FA and our 350 clubs with youth teams, including the London FA Youth Council.

We have designed a structured co-creation process for participating grassroots clubs, which will form the foundation of programme development. This workshop is the starting point of an ongoing design process that directly shapes the pilot and full delivery.

We plan to establish a Youth Football Climate Panel, which would be integrated within the London FA’s existing Youth Council structure. Participants would be drawn from grassroots clubs across London, to play an ongoing role in shaping the programme beyond the co-design workshop, including:

• Influencing how climate action is defined and prioritised within football club contexts
• Reviewing and refining workshop content and resources at key milestones
• Having the opportunity to share ideas to evolve the programme throughout the season

We will also establish Climate Champions within clubs, with the goal of supporting their clubs to identify, implement and evidence at least one practical sustainability action per season, such as changes to travel behaviour, waste reduction, kit reuse, or energy awareness within club facilities. They will also help track and share progress within their teams and football communities. These Champions would tie into existing structures the clubs have in place, such as club-level Youth Council or Youth Advisory Board.

These steps will ensure that young people are genuine co-leaders and co-creators of the initiative, throughout the entirety of the programme. 

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?

Building on Football For Future’s proven academy and club delivery, this programme will raise climate awareness, shift behaviours, and reduce environmental impact across London’s grassroots football community. FFF workshops with professional academies and clubs have shown tangible results: young players gained hands-on understanding of sustainability and climate change, translating learning into personal and club-level action, while staff training increased climate literacy from 27% to 81% and motivation to act from 69% to 92%, generating 200+ documented sustainability actions now embedded in club operations.

Our programme will be developed and scaled through our London FA grassroots network, where we anticipate engaging 20 clubs in the initial 18–24 month phase, representing engagement with approximately 500-1,000 young people, alongside coaches and volunteers across participating clubs.

Initial engagement with London FA accredited Thriving Community Clubs has already confirmed strong demand and clear knowledge gaps within grassroots football. In an expression of interest survey completed during the Capacity Building phase, 100% of respondents expressed interest in participating in a climate education programme. However, only 44% reported a good understanding of climate change and just 11% understood its relationship to football, highlighting both the need and the opportunity for structured, football-specific climate education at grassroots level.

This means empowering them to identify and implement practical actions in their local context,  from energy and waste management to sustainable travel and community campaigns. We anticipate participants will not only increase their climate knowledge and confidence but also embed visible, football-led climate action in clubs, inspiring peers and communities. By connecting education to meaningful practice, the initiative transforms concern about climate change into measurable, sustained action across the capital’s football ecosystem. 

Innovation: What is different about your initiative compared to other solutions that are already out there? How is your approach original and innovative?

We believe that this initiative is the first climate action programme designed specifically for London’s grassroots football sector, embedding climate learning and delivery directly within the structures of community clubs, leagues, and volunteers at scale. While climate education exists in schools and broader environmental programmes, few approaches are delivered through grassroots sport in a way that connects learning to practical, club-level action and behaviour change.

Our approach is original because it combines:

• Football as a trusted engagement platform - using clubs, leagues, and volunteer networks to reach young people and communities through an existing weekly touchpoint.
• Co-designed, action-focused learning - young players shape the programme design and lead practical sustainability initiatives within their clubs, embedding change and inspiring their communities
• Proven delivery and scalability - Football For Future’s existing climate resources, proven in professional football settings, will be adapted and scaled to reach London’s grassroots ecosystem.

The initiative creates a scalable model for how football governing bodies can integrate climate education and action into grassroots infrastructure, with a clear pathway for replication across other County FAs and community football systems. 

Roles and Responsibilities: Describe how responsibilities are shared among your team or partners.

London FA, as the lead applicant, will oversee programme governance, coordination, and delivery, across grassroots clubs and leagues in London. This includes club recruitment and engagement, safeguarding and compliance, scheduling, and oversight of delivery across participating clubs, and monitoring, evaluation, and reporting to funders. London FA will also ensure integration with existing club development structures so the programme is embedded within our established football systems rather than operating as a standalone initiative.

Football For Future will be the subject-matter experts, leading the design and delivery of the climate content, including a football-climate interactive workshop, a practical sustainability handbook and a climate adaptation toolkit.

A new dedicated Club Engagement Officer (Climate & Sustainability) role, hosted by London FA and embedded across both London FA and Football For Future teams.

Together, London FA and FFF will co-design and refine programme content with young people and selected clubs during the pilot phase, ensuring the programme reflects grassroots realities and remains relevant to the needs, capacity, and priorities of community football settings. 

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?

London FA’s established network of grassroots clubs, leagues, volunteers, and young players provides a strong foundation for delivery, alongside Football For Future’s proven expertise in designing and delivering football-based climate education and delivery resources. This combination enables both immediate implementation and long-term integration within existing football structures.

This partnership combines system-wide reach through London FA with specialist climate expertise through Football For Future, enabling both credible delivery and long-term integration within grassroots football infrastructure.

A new dedicated Club Engagement Officer (Climate & Sustainability) role will be created to lead the programme. Establishing this role will be essential for programme success, ensuring a dedicated focus on programme development and delivery, a clear point of contact for ongoing club support on sustainability, and ensuring full integration with existing London FA club support structures and development pathways, including our Thriving Community Clubs initiative. This role will act as a prototype for how climate capacity can be integrated into County FA structures nationally.

Developing new climate learning and delivery resources bespoke to a community-club setting, establishing Climate Champions across participating clubs and integrating a new Youth Football Climate Panel within the London FA’s existing Youth Council structure will all ensure operational sustainability and represent a scalable delivery model.

The programme is designed to scale in stages: first across London, then nationally via County FAs, and ultimately to international football governing bodies. Strategic partnerships, shared learning, and continued support will enable wider reach while maintaining quality. This approach ensures immediate impact and a credible pathway to long-term, sector-wide climate literacy and action. 

Upcoming Milestones: Please provide an overview of the milestones that are required for your initiative to come to fruition/ to grow.

1. Programme Co-Design (Months 1-2): Collaborate with young people, clubs, and volunteers to finalise workshop content, practical projects, and youth-led initiatives. 2. Recruitment & Engagement (Months 2-3): Mobilise grassroots clubs, coaches, and volunteers across London through London FA networks. 3. Pilot Workshops (Months 3-4): Deliver initial sessions with selected clubs to test content, gather feedback, and refine materials, with the 2 pilot leagues involved with the FA's upcoming Greater Game flagship league programme a potential starting point. 4. Full Programme Roll-Out (Months 5-10): Scale delivery across London grassroots clubs, incorporating workshops, club projects, and youth-led initiatives. 5. Monitoring & Evaluation (Ongoing): Track climate literacy, behaviour change, and actions at club and participant level. 6. Reporting & Knowledge Sharing (Months 9-12): Share outcomes, lessons learned, and best practices across London FA networks and with wider County FAs to support future scaling.

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).

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 will be central to the design and delivery of this programme, taking a role within this initiative that makes them co-leaders and co-creators of content, delivery, and implementation. This will expand upon existing youth leadership structures that are already established across London FA and its clubs, including the London FA Youth Council.

We have designed a structured co-creation process for participating grassroots clubs, which forms the foundation of programme development. This workshop is the starting point of an ongoing design process that directly shapes the pilot and full delivery.

The co-creation process brings together young players alongside coaches and volunteers, to explore their lived experience of climate impacts on football, identify the most pressing challenges within their clubs, and translate these into practical priorities for action. Through interactive mapping exercises, participants highlight real issues such as pitch disruption, travel challenges, kit waste, and facility constraints, ensuring the programme is grounded in the realities of grassroots football.

Outputs from this co-creation process directly inform:

• Workshop themes and resource content
• Implementation of club sustainability action and ongoing support
• How success and impact will be measured at club level
• The role of youth leadership throughout the programme

This approach ensures that young people and clubs genuinely co-design the programme before delivery begins, and their lived experience directly determines what is delivered across London grassroots football.

We plan to establish a Youth Football Climate Panel, which would be integrated within the London FA’s existing Youth Council structure. Participants would be drawn from grassroots clubs across London, to play an ongoing role in shaping the programme beyond the co-design workshop, including:

• Influencing how climate action is defined and prioritised within football club contexts
• Reviewing and refining workshop content and resources at key milestones
• Having the opportunity to share ideas to evolve the programme throughout the season

We will also establish Climate Champions within clubs, with the goal of supporting their clubs to identify, implement and evidence at least one practical sustainability action per season, such as changes to travel behaviour, waste reduction, kit reuse, or energy awareness within club facilities. They will also help track and share progress within their teams and football communities. These Champions would tie into existing structures the clubs have in place, such as club-level Youth Council or Youth Advisory Board.

These steps will ensure that young people are genuine co-leaders and co-creators of the initiative, throughout the entirety of the programme. 

What partnerships and collaborations are most critical to delivering and sustaining your initiative and how are you building/ plan to build them? 

(1) London FA (lead applicant and London grassroots football convener)

London FA provides the institutional infrastructure that enables system-wide delivery. This includes access to grassroots clubs and leagues across London, integration into existing football development programmes, safeguarding and governance oversight, and coordination of engagement across the football community, including through the London FA Youth Council. This ensures access at scale across volunteer-led London clubs, and ensures the programme design and delivery is grounded in an understanding of the realities of grassroots football.

(2) Football For Future (football-climate experts and delivery partner)

Football For Future leads the design of the programme and delivery resources, adapting its proven materials from professional academy and club environments for grassroots football contexts. This includes workshop content and developing practical guides and toolkits that enable clubs to implement sustainability actions independently. A new dedicated Club Engagement Officer (Climate & Sustainability) would be upskilled by Football For Future to become the lead workshop facilitator and to provide ongoing club support grounded on the practical resources.

(3) Grassroots clubs (implementation partners)

Clubs act as active delivery environments, hosting workshops and embedding climate actions within their existing operations. They identify locally relevant priorities such as pitch conditions, travel patterns, kit use, and facility management, ensuring the programme reflects real operational challenges. Clubs also support the establishment and participation of Climate Champions and the Youth Football Climate Panel, enabling young people to lead and evidence practical sustainability actions within their teams.

(4) Wider ecosystem partners

Once the programme is underway, it is likely that wider ecosystem partners will be established including the Football Association and other County FA’s, leagues, local authorities, professional clubs, commercial partners and environmental organisation, to support the impact, scalability and long-term establishment of this programme.

What are you measuring, how are you measuring it, and what does the data tell you so far (quantitative and qualitative)? 

Initial engagement with London FA accredited Thriving Community Clubs has already confirmed strong demand and clear knowledge gaps within grassroots football. In an expression of interest survey completed during the Capacity Building phase, 100% of respondents expressed interest in participating in a climate education programme. However, only 44% reported a good understanding of climate change and just 11% understood its relationship to football, highlighting both the need and the opportunity for structured, football-specific climate education at grassroots level.

We will measure impact across three levels: learning impact, club-level impact, and programme impact. These indicators will be embedded through London FA systems to ensure data collection is practical within grassroots football environments.

(1) Learning impact: We will use short pre- and post-workshop surveys completed at the start and end of each session, to measure:

• Number of individual participants, by role
• Improvement in understanding of how climate change impacts football
• Improvement in confidence to take action within a club setting

We would expect to see improvements that match Football For Future’s existing impact monitoring from professional academy environments, which have shown significant increases in climate literacy and motivation to act.

(2) Cub-level impact: We will conduct follow-up check-ins 8–12 weeks after workshops with participating clubs, and embed environmental action tracking within London FA reporting structures, to measure:

• Number of sustainability actions implemented
• Types of action and related impact
• Number of young people active in implementing actions

This layer helps us understand whether learning has translated into sustained environmental improvements at the club beyond the workshop environment. We would expect each club to identify, implement and evidence at least one practical sustainability action per season

(3) Programme impact: We would monitor overall levels of participation and engagement with the programme on quarterly basis, to measure:

• Number of engaged clubs and participating individuals
• Number of workshops delivered
• Number of Climate Champions active

We anticipate engaging 20 clubs in the initial 18–24 month phase, with the intention of running multiple workshops across multiple age groups at each club, with participation of approximately 500-1,000 young people, alongside coaches and volunteers.  

We would anticipate having 1 Climate Champion per engaged club, around 10 of which would sit on the Youth Football Climate Panel, and one positioned within London FA’s Youth Council.

We would complement this data with qualitative evidence gathered through conversations with clubs, coaches and volunteers, focus groups with the Youth Football Climate Panel, and case studies from selected Climate Champions and clubs. 

Long-term impact: what lasting systems change are you seeking to create and how will you know when it has happened? 

The long-term goal of this initiative is to embed climate literacy, climate resilience and practical climate action into the operating system of grassroots football, making it a normal and sustained part of how clubs, coaches, and young people participate in the game. This shifts grassroots football to become a platform for climate engagement, rather than just a sector that is affected by extreme weather.

Football For Future have identified something we call the ‘football-climate perception gap’ which is when those involved in football experience the effects of climate change in how they organise, play, and watch football, yet struggle to connect these impacts with the broader climate crisis. They feel the symptoms, but do not name the cause. This programme aims to close the football-climate perception gap, resulting in more citizens who understand and are able to constructively engage with the climate crisis.

In 5–10 years, success would look like a grassroots football system in which:

• Climate education is embedded within County FA and club development pathways, rather than delivered as standalone programmes
• Every grassroots club implements basic, repeatable sustainability practices as part of normal operations
• Grassroots football systems have a high-level of climate resilience embedded though their operations and infrastructure
• Young players expect and experience climate action as a standard part of football participation and club life, including established Climate Champion and Youth Football Climate Panel roles
• Coaches and volunteers are equipped through FA-linked training to act as climate-aware community leaders within their clubs
• Football is formally recognised within the wider sport and public sector ecosystem as a scalable channel for community-level climate engagement

If the initiative stopped, its legacy would include:

• A closed football-climate perception gap in London grassroots football
• A network of Club Champions and the Youth Football Climate Panel
• Clubs with embedded, ongoing sustainability practices initiated through the programme
• A football-climate curriculum ready to integrate into grassroots football delivery systems
• A replicable model demonstrating how football governance structures can deliver climate engagement at scale 

Is there anything else you'd like to share with us that you were not able to share in previous questions?

This initiative brings together three complementary system strengths:

• London FA, providing governance, legitimacy, and direct access to grassroots football infrastructure across London
• Grassroots football itself, as a high-trust, high-reach delivery system engaging young people and communities on a weekly basis
• Football For Future, contributing a tested, evidence-based climate education methodology developed and refined in professional football environments

A new dedicated Club Engagement Officer (Climate & Sustainability) role will be created to lead the programme. Establishing this role will be essential for programme success, ensuring a dedicated focus on programme development and delivery, a clear point of contact for ongoing club support on sustainability, and ensuring full integration with existing London FA club support structures and development pathways, including our Thriving Community Clubs initiative. This role will act as a prototype for how climate capacity can be integrated into County FA structures nationally.

The opportunity lies in using this existing football infrastructure as a delivery system for climate engagement, embedding learning and action within the places where young people already participate, rather than creating parallel or external programmes.

At grassroots volunteer-led clubs, system reach is extensive but resource is constrained. The development of such a programme is not currently resourced within existing grassroots football development budgets, or through the Premier League or professional football otherwise. External funding is therefore required to support co-creation with clubs, adapting and simplifying proven academy-based content for volunteer-led environments, building toolkits, training coaches and volunteers, and embedding evaluation mechanisms within FA systems. These are foundational infrastructure elements which, once established, may unlock new institutional funding opportunities.

Delivery of our planned co-creation and pilot engagement activities were constrained by club availability during the refinement process timeline, because this coincided with the end of the football season. However, initial engagement with London FA accredited Thriving Community Clubs has already confirmed strong demand and clear knowledge gaps within grassroots football. In an expression of interest survey completed during the Capacity Building phase, 100% of respondents expressed interest in participating in a climate education programme.  

Direct conversations with clubs including Alexandra Park Youth (41 youth teams), Chislehurst Glebe (32 youth teams), and Longlane Juniors (27 youth teams) have confirmed real interest in participation in this programme once the season commences from September 2026. Similarly, regional County FA’s, including Hampshire FA, have also expressed interest through conversation in offering participation opportunities in this programme through their clubs, should the opportunity be available.

We see this as the first phase of a wider national blueprint, where County FAs act as delivery hubs for climate education within football. The London FA pilot will generate the governance model, curriculum, training approach, and evaluation framework required for replication across other County FAs and, ultimately, integration into broader football system structures.

Please note we have also refined our previous responses following the feedback, capacity building process and further detailed shaping of this programme proposal, please review below.