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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If you are applying from an organization founded by an Ashoka Fellow, please specify the name and organisation of the fellow below.

Initiative Title

Paddlers for the Planet Protecting: protecting access to safe sport through youth-led climate action

Lead Organization Name

Leaside

My initiative is designed for and delivered in London

1

Year that you started/ registered your organisation

1993

Website URL(s) or Social Media Handles

www.leaside.org.uk

Initiative Stage

Growth (You’ve moved past the very first activities; working towards the next level of expansion.)

Sectors/Themes: What topic does your project most directly relate to?

Children & Youth

Initiative Summary: Describe your initiative in one sentence

A youth-led paddlesport and climate action programme that combines river access with environmental education and citizen science, supporting young people to move from experiencing the River Lea to actively shaping its future.
A youth-led paddlesport and climate action programme that combines river access with environmental education and citizen science, supporting young people to move from experiencing the River Lea to actively shaping its future.

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 driving heavier storms that flush raw sewage and toxic road runoff into the River Lea, resulting in 40 times more pollution than international safety standards. Heatwaves strip oxygen from the water causing fish die-offs.  

The young people living by the Lea in Hackney, where 64% of children live in income-deprived households, up to 99% in some areas, are the least likely to have access to watersports and outdoor environmental learning - these remain stubbornly associated with economic privilege. School budgets have been cut hard up to 68% in the most deprived schools reducing access to trips, watersports and environmental education.

This is a systems problem. Young people witness and feel the impacts of climate change viscerally as it directly threatens their access to paddlesports but have no meaningful role in shaping solutions. Climate action is framed as adult, expert territory. River governance excludes the communities most affected. Decision-makers don't hear young people's voices.

Nearly one in five young people have mental health issues. For young people in East London, many rarely leaving their urban boroughs, access to outdoor adventure on the water and connection to nature is vital for wellbeing plus greater agency reduces feelings of eco-anxiety affecting 70%. The River Lea needs a generation of leaders who know it, love it and will fight for it. 

Your approach: How are you addressing the problem outlined above? How are you using the power of sport and physical activity to build awareness, shift behavior, and enable sustainable participation for all in response to the climate crisis? We'd love to know about the origin of your idea, and what was your "aha" moment" that led you to take action?

Our sport is deeply connected to nature. Our 'aha' moment was when young paddlers  found the river choked with dead fish after heavy rain. Children cried trying to save what they could, including endangered eels. Protecting access to sport now requires action and young people to become climate leaders. This project is how we want to make that happen.

Paddlers for the Planet creates a pathway from a young person's first experience on the water, whether through school or youth sessions, to taking informed environmental action, to leadership and participation in river governance.

River Classroom offers schools subsidised hybrid sessions. ecoACTIVE delivers classroom environmental education - carbon literacy, water ecosystems, climate science. Leaside takes pupils onto the Lea for practical action: water quality testing, invasive species removal, habitat restoration or litter picking. A bursary model ensures the most deprived schools participate on equal terms.

Leaside's year-round open access youth club will embed regular climate focused sessions alongside paddlespots, giving young people the knowledge, skills and time to explore the Lea, understand the challenges and take practical action. Ongoing relationships make deeper co-creation and progression possible.

A new Lea Youth Council of 10-12 young people, from school and youth club, meeting regularly to co-create climate projects, shape Leaside's direction and represent youth voices in the newly emerging River Lea Working Group. Young people are not consulted, they are at the table.

An annual youth-led creative public event supports a mindset shift from ‘young people don't care’ to ‘this river belongs to us’.

Mobilising Leaside's net zero centre we will share learning and resources to inspire other paddle clubs to replicate. 

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?

The capacity-building programme challenged us to think deeply about genuine youth participation, the difference between involving young people and sharing power with them. This project is a direct result of that learning.

For school groups, participation is shorter-term. Young people shape activities through feedback and reflection, identify the changes they want to see, and help refine a model that other clubs can replicate.

For youth club members, collaboration goes deeper because the relationship is ongoing. Creative workshops during capacity building showed young people engage most powerfully through direct experience and action on the water rather than abstract discussion. They identify river issues, design projects and become leaders over time.

The Lea Youth Council formalises that power shift. A youth led space that goes beyond consultation where young people develop ideas, projects and recommendations to shape Leaside feeding directly into Board discussions. They also bring their priorities and citizen science evidence into the River Lea Working Group.

The annual public event provides a platform for young people to share their stories, creativity and vision with families, communities and decision-makers. Our hub for community-led climate and river action means young people are supported by a wider network of passionate people and organisations building the relationships, confidence and support needed to turn ideas into action.  Leaside's Festival of Light showed what is possible when young people are given real time, skills and a genuine brief. Our ambition is that young people become not just participants, but leaders, advocates and changemakers within their communities. 

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?

Over three years, ecoACTIVE and Leaside have delivered 67 climate learning and river action days with more than 2,000 young people, giving us strong evidence that this approach works. Evaluation shows measurable increases in climate understanding, connection to nature and willingness to take action.

This funding will deepen and scale that impact. 420 school pupils will access subsidised River Classroom sessions and 200 young people each year will participate through the youth club. At least 30 young people will gain the internationally recognised ISEP Environmental Sustainability qualification.

The project's core impact is helping young people move from concern about environmental issues to meaningful action. Through paddlesport, citizen science, habitat restoration and climate action projects, young people develop the skills, confidence and agency to care for and advocate for the River Lea.

Young people will lead at least 15 river action days annually, undertake around 30 water quality tests, deliver biodiversity and habitat improvement projects, and remove an estimated 5 tonnes of litter from the River Lea each year. These activities create immediate environmental benefits while generating evidence for longer-term change.

An annual public event will bring young people's river stories directly to families, residents and decision-makers, helping build wider community stewardship of the river.

Longer term, the Lea Youth Council creates a pathway from participation to influence. Young people will bring their priorities and citizen science evidence into conversations with river stakeholders through the River Lea Working Group. Through Paddle UK and our toolkit, the model can be adapted by clubs nationwide, extending impact beyond East London.

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

Market research confirmed a clear gap: no other provider combines practical river action through paddlesport with environmental education, accessible to the communities that need it most.

Most environmental education stops at awareness. Young people understand the scale of the climate crisis but are left feeling powerless, and that builds anxiety not agency. Sport and having an embodied experience of nature changes motivations. Young people protect the river because they paddle on it, in nature not just learning about it. The reason to care is personal and tangible. Crucially, it's good for young people, not just good for the environment - they gain leadership experience, practical skills, better mental health, fitness, connection to nature and accredited qualifications.  

Institutional accountability around our rivers is broken. The Environment Agency, Thames Water and local authorities are failing to protect waterways that communities depend on, not always from lack of knowledge but lack of pressure. A youth council of informed young people, whose access to sport and nature is directly threatened by institutional inaction, sitting alongside a formal River Lea Working Group within the Lea Catchment Partnership, is a powerful and novel accountability mechanism. Young people generate real citizen science data on water quality, litter and invasive species. They are not doing science as an exercise, they are producing evidence that decision-makers must respond to.

Finally, most paddle clubs across the UK run youth and schools programmes on waterways facing identical problems but lack the knowledge and resources to act. We will share learning, resources, training and inspiration as a pioneering net zero hub demonstrating that climate action is a replicable model. 

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

Leaside and ecoACTIVE are co-located and have a good track record of working closely together, Leaside is the lead partner. The grant funds the equivalent of one full-time project role, shared between dedicated coordinators both orgs responsible for delivery, partnerships, resource development, safeguarding, monitoring and youth engagement.

Leaside leads paddlesport delivery, river action activities and youth leadership development. It convenes and hosts the Lea Youth Council, providing the infrastructure and support for young people to develop as river stewards and climate leaders.

ecoACTIVE leads environmental education, curriculum development and delivery of the ISEP Environmental Sustainability Skills for the Workforce qualification, ensuring climate learning is connected to practical action.

Michael Shilling provides communications and marketing support, developing resources and materials to share learning with schools, partners and other paddle clubs.

Young people play an active role in shaping the programme. Through the Lea Youth Council they develop ideas, projects and recommendations that feed directly into Leaside's Board and the River Lea Working Group.

Achieving lasting change requires wider partnership. The River Lea Working Group brings together the Environment Agency, Canal & River Trust, Thames Water and local authorities, creating a route for young people's ideas and evidence to inform wider river management and decision-making.

Programme administration and financial management are shared between Leaside and ecoACTIVE through a formal partnership agreement with clear accountability at each stage.  

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?

This programme builds on established work of Leaside and ecoACTIVE. Existing youth clubs, school partnerships, coaching staff, and environmental education expertise are already in place. This funding scales and expands rather than starting from scratch.

We’ve taken a practical approach to long-term financial sustainability. Schools have confirmed demand and willingness to contribute, supported by a tiered pricing model and bursaries to ensure access for the most deprived. Corporate volunteering days generate income while practically supporting river restoration.  

The funded consultant developed a practical, realistic three-year funding strategy aimed at reducing grant dependency. By 2029, the majority of delivery costs will be covered through earned income and donations.

Costs will also reduce over time. Initial staff-intensive investment in resource development, training, and establishing the youth council will transition into a lower-cost delivery model as it embeds within our wider programmes.

Scaling will be achieved through open, shared learning. Session plans, citizen science guides, and youth toolkits will be made freely available for replication by paddle clubs, youth organisations, and schools. Leaside’s net zero centre will host training days promoted through Paddle UK, ecoACTIVE will provide training and climate action mentoring..

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

Summer/Autumn 2026 (Pre-start): Partnership agreement signed. Project coordinators at Leaside and ecoACTIVE recruited. Management framework agreed. Fundraising strategy activated. Schools mapping begins -identifying priority schools, understanding curriculum needs, building relationships with trip coordinators.

October–December 2026: Project launches in earnest. Off-season used productively with coordinators researching session resources, ecoACTIVE begins designing monthly environmental learning workshops for Leaside staff and volunteers, youth worker lays foundations for youth engagement strand. Outreach to schools underway.

January–March 2027: Pilot workshops with schools to co-design and refine River Classroom sessions. Training delivered to paddlesport coaches. Youth club co-design workshops begin with young people shaping the environmental programme.  Build relationships with youth club promoting the Lea Youth Council.

Spring–Summer 2027: River Classroom launches, first school cohorts receive subsidised sessions. Youth club environmental action sessions running alongside paddlesport, focused Paddlers for the Planet sessions doing citizen science or litter picks.  Holiday programmes - young people work on longer term creative project. Corporate volunteering days generating income. Young people deliver an event during Spring open day.

Autumn 2027: Lea Youth Council recruited and holding first meetings. Mid-point evaluation. Bursary model operational, schools booked in for Autumn term. Accredited ISEP training offered to youth club.

Winter 2027/8:  Off season youth planning of public event for early march, use Feb half term to complete. Outreach to Paddle Clubs and Youth Clubs to share model, key learning and resources.

Spring–Summer 2028: Youth Council feeding into River Lea Working Group. ISEP qualifications completed. Training workshops delivered to partner paddle clubs with resources shared.

Autumn 2028: Youth-led creative public event planned and delivered. Full evaluation completed. Sustainability plan for Year 3 confirmed.

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).

We used the capacity building funding to commission four pieces of work that together have fundamentally strengthened the programme's design, evidence base and sustainability. These projects are referenced throughout the bid.

• Market Research commissioned from Ciara Devlin, who consulted schools, youth clubs, corporate partners and paddle clubs across East London. Key findings confirmed strong demand for the programme with no comparable provider in the area, identified a tiered pricing model as the most viable approach to school access, and gave us a clearer picture of how to reach and communicate with each audience.
• Youth Arts Co-Design Workshops artist Alexandra McKenzie ran creative sessions with young people from Leaside's youth club and Harrington Hill Primary School. The workshops revealed that young people engage most deeply with environmental issues through making, doing and being on the water rather than abstract discussion. Those insights have directly shaped how we design co-creation and youth leadership across the programme.
• Fundraising Strategy and Impact Framework David Page at Triceratops Training worked with both organisations to map our networks, research comparable organisations, develop a three year funding strategy and build a case for support with an impact measurement framework. This work underpins our viability and sustainability plan.
• Communications and Narrative Strategy Michael Shilling developed a full communications strategy including audience personas, messaging frameworks, channel strategy and a content calendar. The strategy established our core narrative shift: from young people being anxious about the climate to young people leading climate solutions. 

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?

The capacity building process was honest with us: there is a meaningful difference between involving young people and genuinely sharing power with them. We are not claiming this programme was co-designed from scratch. We are describing a deliberate two-year journey from consultation toward co-creation, and being specific about what that means in practice.

In Year 1, the foundations are relational. A dedicated project coordinator embeds within the youth club, building trust through sustained presence rather than one-off workshops. Young people do not fill in surveys -they make decisions. They choose which river issues to prioritise, which action projects to pursue, and how the environmental programme takes shape. A young person joins Leaside's board with full voting rights. School participants actively refine session content -their feedback visibly changes what we deliver.

Alexandra McKenzie's artist-led workshops gave us a critical insight: young people engage as leaders through making, doing and being on the water -not through abstract consultation. That shapes every co-design mechanism we use.

In Year 2, power shifts structurally. The Lea Youth Council is not a consultation forum -it is a formal body with a genuine role in river governance, sitting within the River Lea Working Group alongside statutory decision-makers. Young people bring their own citizen science data to that table. They own the annual creative public event brief from the very beginning -not as contributors to an adult-designed project, but as its leaders.

We know this works. Young people at Leaside already volunteer, mentor peers, lead sessions and campaign publicly. The Youth Council is the next rung -from leading within Leaside to leading beyond it. 

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

Our most critical delivery partnership is with ecoACTIVE, co-located at Leaside. Their environmental education expertise, ISEP accreditation and two decades of work with Hackney's young people give the programme its educational credibility. Young people who have been through ecoACTIVE's programmes have always helped shape how sessions are delivered and developed, and that continues here.

Over the past two years Leaside has become a convening hub for the River Lea, bringing together the Environment Agency, Canal and River Trust, Thames21 and Thames Water to tackle river health. We coordinated the Love Lea Festival and hosted a pollution safari with key decision-makers, both entirely unfunded. That track record is why Leaside will coordinate the new River Lea Working Group within the London Lea Catchment Partnership. These relationships are already built, not aspirational, and they are what give young people's voices, ideas and citizen science data somewhere meaningful to go.

Both Leaside and ecoACTIVE have strong school networks and a solid reputation as outdoor providers, confirmed by the market research. The GLA, Hackney, Waltham Forest and Haringey councils connect us to schools and youth services, and we have good relationships with cabinet members and local authority leads for sport and climate. The East London Business Alliance (ELBA) brokers our corporate partnerships, generating earned income from day one. Their recent organisational visit to Leaside showed the strength of that relationship.

Hackney Youth Parliament is a key partner for the Lea Youth Council, connecting us to young people already engaged in civic life and giving the council legitimacy beyond Leaside's own membership. Leaside's existing members and local river users are equally important, connecting young people to the community activists and campaigners already fighting for the river's future.

ecoACTIVE staff are registered mentors under The Climate Ambassador Programme (DfE) which enables connections with schools that are seeking support with climate education and opportunities for community action.

Paddle UK is our route to national replication, connecting us to clubs across the country whose waterways face identical pressures but who lack the tools to act. 

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

Leaside is a ‘doing’ organisation that has not always captured our impact well. That is changing. ecoACTIVE brings stronger evaluation frameworks to the partnership and during the capacity building phase we commissioned a market researcher and an impact consultant whose work has sharpened our thinking about what to measure and why. Our approach is deliberately proportionate, measurement should no burden young people or create unrealistic admin for a small organisation whose staff are mostly on the water. 

River Classroom ecoACTIVE and Leaside have delivered 67 hybrid climate learning and river action reaching approximately 2,000 school young people over the past three years. Pre and post session feedback consistently shows young people feel more connected to the river and leave with a clearer sense of what they can do. They enjoy being on the water. "Going on the canoes was the best experience. We all got soaked but we are all smiling." They feel the river's problems personally. "When I see bottles and cans on the river, I feel disgusted." because the world is in big danger." "We should do a big clean-up of the river every year with everyone involved." 

Youth Club Our online booking system captures attendance and demographics automatically, reported quarterly to Young Hackney. Sessions are briefed and debriefed. Each programme includes open feedback sessions and we run focus groups and produce annual reports with case studies. Artist-led co-design workshops during capacity building gave us qualitative insight into what motivates young people -they engage most deeply through doing, not discussion.

Leadership and Progression Leaside has adapted the UK Centre for Youth Impact outcomes framework, used in our trainee programme review. Five of eight trainees have since taken on paid Leaside work. A young person won Young Hackney Youth Awards Leader of the Year, another received second place as Youth Volunteer of the Year. The Festival of Light was filmed, capturing young people co-creating something that moved their community. "Being a trainee has allowed me to feel like a real leader. It's given me a chance to lead a session on my own which I thought I would struggle with, but I actually enjoy it."

Going forward we will track six areas.

• Participation and demographics: quarterly.  
• Progression: achievements and leadership milestones documented big and small, from a first kayak roll to a young person joining the board.  
• Environmental gains: water quality results, litter and pennywort removed, biodiversity projects, recorded after every session and submitted to the River Lea Working Group.  
• Behaviour and mindset change: brief in-session feedback at every school visit and regular end of session check-ins at youth club, monitoring whether young people are making connections to their own lives and taking action beyond sessions.  
• Mindset shift and community impact: the annual public event will be documented through attendance, participant feedback and ideally filmed, capturing whether young people and the wider community are shifting how they see the river and their role in protecting it.  
• Systems change: every instance where the Lea Youth Council influences Leaside's board or the River Lea Working Group, documented with outcomes, plus a record of every organisation that uses or downloads our resources, or adopts our model. Replication is our most powerful systems change indicator. 

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

The system we are working to change is one where young people from deprived communities are passive recipients of environmental decline rather than active agents of change. Climate action is framed as adult, expert territory. River governance excludes the communities most affected. Access to environmental education and outdoor sport remains tied to economic privilege.

Our targeted systems change goal is this: young people from East London's most deprived communities become recognised leaders in environmental decision-making for the River Lea, and that model spreads to other waterways across the UK. Paddlers for the Planet shifts the conditions that make this possible. The bursary model removes the financial barrier to outdoor environmental education. The Lea Youth Council creates a formal civic role for young people that did not previously exist, embedded within the River Lea Working Group and within Leaside's own governance. The replication toolkit means other paddle clubs and youth organisations across the country can embed environmental leadership in their programmes without starting from scratch.

In five to ten years, success looks like this: The Lea Youth Council is an established independent body with a new generation of members, routinely informing river management and Leaside's direction. The River Lea is healthier and more climate resilient, with young people having led habitat restoration, pollution campaigns and biodiversity projects. Leaside is a recognised net zero community sports hub and champion for youth climate leadership. Paddle clubs across the UK are running their own versions of this programme on their own waterways.

The legacy that would remain after this project is a generation of young people who know the river and have genuine experience of environmental leadership. A youth council structure embedded in local governance. A network of clubs with practical tools to act. And a community that sees the Lea as something worth fighting for.

We will know systems change is happening when the Youth Council meets and acts independently, when young people's voices shape decisions about the river's future, and when other organisations replicate this model without our involvement.
 

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

We wanted to emphasise that this is a climate project that uses the River Lea as our lens.

This is because rivers are where the climate crisis becomes visible, tangible, and personal for young people we work with. Extreme rainfall events overwhelm sewers and flood the Lea with pollution. Rising temperatures cause oxygen crashes and the river needs aerators put in throughout summer to prevent fish die-offs — literally a life support. Invasive species spread as winters warm. Drought reduces flow and sudden heavy rains risk long-term flooding. We also see the huge expansion of plastic pollution that flows past us, slowly making its way into the ocean. The river is a living record of climate change, updated daily, on the doorstep of some of the most deprived communities in England.

Research consistently shows that direct, embodied experience of nature is one of the most effective routes to lasting environmental values and behaviour change. Young people who paddle on the Lea are not learning about the climate crisis in the abstract — they are living it, and they are motivated to act because of it.

Second, it might seem ambitious or confusing that we want to work with schools and youth club settings that have different qualities. Leaside has delivered paddlesport through schools and a year-round youth club from this site for over 60 years. These are not new systems being created by this project; they are established, trusted, well-attended programmes that reach thousands of young people annually. But we felt it was important to expand the approach linking climate learning, action, and leadership across both strands, building on infrastructure that already works. It's also relevant to create approaches as most Paddle Clubs also have the dual youth programmes.

Leaside has demonstrated huge dedication to pioneering and embedding climate solutions as fundamental to our organisation. Since 2021, we have transitioned to 100% renewable energy, installed over 90 solar panels, 30kW battery storage, an air source heat pump, and EV charging, generating over 50,000 kWh of renewable electricity and avoiding 30 tonnes of CO₂. We have removed over 200 canoe loads of litter and an estimated 30 tonnes of invasive pennywort from the River Lea, built a net zero classroom from a former boat store, created wildlife habitats that have brought back grass snakes, newts, hedgehogs, and rare pollinators, and completed an independent Eco-Audit in 2025 to guide our path to Net Zero by 2030. Young people do not just learn about climate solutions at Leaside; they see them working every time they arrive to paddle.

Finally, we are honest that £100,000 across two organisations over two years is a foundation, not a complete solution. We are actively building the earned income and partnership model that sustains this beyond the grant period. This funding makes that possible. We have been encouraged to be incredibly ambitious with this project, which is brilliant, but to fully make a project of this ambition a reality, it needs more capacity than would be provided by just the grant.

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