Young Green Briton Challenge design workshop

The Young Green Briton Challenge is delivered as a partnership between Social Innovation for All, Volunteers for Future, the Ministry of Eco Education and the Green Britain Foundation. It combines climate education with green change-making, enabling KS3 students to learn and apply design, innovation, campaigning and business skills. Young people work in teams, selecting a local climate issue that they each wish to address and exploring their causes before brainstorming and evaluating potential solutions . The workshop finishes with each team sharing their proposed solution. Teams from each school have the opportunity to pitch for funding and mentorship to implement their entrepreneurial solutions or campaigns. At the end of the academic year national awards are held to celebrate the impact of all of the local climate action projects and to make further investment into the most promising ideas.

Students who complete the whole programme and to implement their solutions will develop all 8 Essential skills. However, the YGBC design workshop is an experience that a whole year group can participate in, giving the opportunity to apply and develop 5 Essential skills, namely Problem Solving, Creativity, Teamwork, Listening and Speaking. Teamwork is core to the experience, as the whole programme is about working together in teams to address environmental challenges. There are a number of exercises focused specifically on problem solving and creativity, including a problem tree to break down the causes and effects of a problem, brainstorming techniques and an idea evaluation framework. Students have to use communication skills throughout the workshop, with listening being emphasised to support teamwork and also to give other teams feedback on their ideas. Speaking is also used throughout the workshop, with students being encouraged to build confidence in sharing their ideas with others in their team before the team presents their big idea with a larger group of people at the end of the day.