Open17 Challenge on Climate Justice

Tackling climate and justice challenges with crowdsourcing

Submission and Evaluation Process

Are you passionate about Climate Justice and have a project or an idea for a solution that supports individuals and communities’ preparedness for Climate Change? Then pitch your idea, prototype, or project that tackles specific Climate Justice challenges using crowdsourcing solutions.

The Open17 Challenge is open to any individual anywhere in the world. Applicants must be 16 or older. Applications must be in English, and participants should have a good command of written and spoken English. 

• Register on the Goodwall Social Network (goodwall.io)
• Go to the #Open17ClimateJustice Challenge page on Goodwall
• Click on “Take Part” and select “Share a Post”
• Record and upload a 1-min video pitch about your idea 
• In the Post title, make sure to add the hashtag #Open17ClimateJustice 

The application deadline is 30 September, midnight CEST

Ensure you provide a valid email address on your Goodwall page, when you register on Goodwall, for follow-up contact.

Selection Criteria

The selection criteria for your idea are Novelty, Relevance, Feasibility, and appropriate use of Crowdsourcing:

• Novelty – your pitch should be about your idea. Describe a specific challenge you want to solve in your community rather than general problems.
• Relevance – your idea should deal with Climate Justice, helping the most vulnerable to climate change build resilience in their communities
• Feasibility – Be ambitious but realistic: your idea should be something that you could achieve with some help from a few like-minded people.
• Crowdsourcing – Explain how you will inspire larger numbers of people to get involved in helping you achieve your idea by either gathering data or taking collective action.

These selection criteria will be used at all stages of the Open17 Challenge, and in particular to select individual applicants for €100 prizes during Aug-Sept 2022, and to cover travel and accommodation for members of top teams that are invited to participate in the conference in Geneva in March 2023.

Further Information

Applicants for the Open17 Challenge can be rewarded for their participation in the challenge in two ways:

1. weekly €100 prizes for the best pitches submitted to the Challenge on the Goodwall platform (Aug-Sept 2022) evaluated by two members of the Crowd4SDG consortium, based on four criteria detailed above, or…
2. travel and accommodation to attend a conference in Geneva (March 2023), to present projects that successfully completed the GEAR innovation cycle described in the Timeline below, based on the decision of a jury including both consortium and external members.

Up to €2500 will be dedicated to the weekly prizes in Aug-Sept, for pitches submitted on the Goodwall social network. Up to €7500 will be allocated to travel and accommodation to members of the two top teams, for attending the conference in March.

A call to action

Climate change affects all of us, but not in the same way. It will likely lead to inequalities within and across nations and between current and future generations. Climate Justice is a term used for framing global warming as an ethical and political issue, rather than one that is purely environmental or physical in nature.

We are interested in ideas for solutions that will help increase the preparedness for climate change of all individuals across the globe, and especially those most vulnerable. By using non-traditional data sources, from social media for example, to provide evidence on problematic and/or critical situations, you can affect national and regional policies. 

Maybe you have a great idea for a solution linked to climate justice, and are looking for a team of like-minded people to work with you. Or perhaps you have a rough prototype that you need help finalizing. Maybe you have a project underway, and would benefit from some coaching. We are a team of researchers at several top universities and international organizations, working together in a European project called Crowd4SDG, who can help you bring your project to fruition.

By taking part, you will learn about crowdsourcing methods, project design, pitching and prototyping. Additionally, top teams will have a chance to travel to Geneva in Switzerland to present their projects to experts working on the SDGs!

Crowd4SDG can offer you several different crowdsourcing tools to support the development of a prototype towards reaching your goals. To get an idea of the tools, visit https://crowd4sdg.eu/about-2/tools/. 

Task Description

The Open17 Challenge is about tackling the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using Citizen Science. This year’s challenge focuses on SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) and SDG 13 (Climate Action).

Applicants pitch a project that tackles specific Climate Justice challenges using crowdsourcing solutions, during August and September 2022. €100 prizes are awarded on a weekly basis to encourage prompt participation.

Also, 50  applicants will be selected to work in teams and receive online coaching to develop their project and deliver a compelling pitch, lasting 5 weeks for 2hrs per week (Oct-Nov). Participants who complete this phase will receive a certificate. 

The most promising projects, as selected by a jury of consortium members and external experts, will progress to an intensive online workshop focused on developing a working prototype, co-organized by CERN IdeaSquare and the Crowd4SDG partners. An objective of this phase is to make a working prototype of a Citizen Science project using Crowd4SDG tools. 

Members from the two top teams, as selected by a further jury of consortium members and external experts, will be invited to an international conference in Geneva in March 2023, called the Geneva Trialogue, to present their projects in person to potential UN and NGO partner organizations and impact investors.

 

Examples of challenges

Experts from agencies of the UN, as well as National Statistical Offices, have helped the Crowd4SDG partners to define specific challenges that address the issues of climate and justice they are particularly keen to monitor. ​​They focused primarily on those disproportionately affected but whose perspectives may not be sufficiently included, such as women, youth, persons with disability, indigenous populations, and other groups that need to be identified in each national context. 

We are looking for ideas that could help to measure or propose ways to improve: 

• The participation of vulnerable groups in the discussion and climate decision-making
• Public services and government responsiveness for climate resilience
• Measuring access to environmental justice
• Measuring access to environmental information and countering mis/disinformation
• Climate change impacts, conflict, displacement, and insecurity

More details on each of the challenges above in the video. 

Timeline

1. Gather phase – Submit your idea by 30 September 2022 on Goodwall, a social network dedicated to connecting young talent with opportunities. Weekly prizes of €100 will be awarded to the most promising pitches. You will need to register on Goodwall first in order to submit a 1-minute video pitch. (here)
2. Evaluate phase – October-November 2023. Selection of 50 participants according to criteria listed below. Participants will be organized into teams. Participants who complete the Open17 online coaching program will receive a certificate. This coaching will last five weeks with 2hrs/weeks of online coaching plus teamwork. 
3. Accelerate phase – December 2022 – February 2023. A jury will select five teams to participate in an online challenge-based innovation workshop co-organized by CERN IdeaSquare and Crowd4SDG partners. 
4. Refine phase – March 2023. Members of the top two teams selected by a jury will have travel and accomodation covered to present their projects to potential UN and NGO partner organizations and impact investors during the Geneva Trialogue event in Geneva, Switzerland, on 16 March 2023 and at the Open Geneva Festival that follows the Trialogue. 
5. STAR Cycle – April-Dec 2023. This year, Crowd4SDG is teaming up with Yoma (Youth Agency Market), an initiative launched by UNICEF, to deploy some of the prototypes from the GEAR cycle through a STAR process (Spread, Tokenize, Analyse, Report). More details about the STAR process and support to teams for deployment will be provided in March 2023. 

Yoma is carrying out operational research sponsored by the Botnar Foundation on the use of tokens to motivate participation in crowdsourcing for environmental monitoring by youth in Africa. The research has a focus on Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania. Research Partners are the Austrian Blockchain Center, Caliberco, CSIC, IIASA, R-Labs and the Université Paris Cite. The project is coordinated by the University of Geneva.