Challenge Europe – taking part on work of the Finnish climate advocate team

The new Finnish climate advocate team has been chosen for the Challenge Europe project and I'm one of the lucky team members. The project of the British Council brings together young professionals around Europe to work on ideas and actions to promote low carbon future.

The first meeting of the new team was absolutely great. The team consists of 15 young professionals with various backgrounds from marketing and communication to energy, meteorology and architecture. Before we started our first exercise to quickly come up with our future visions of low carbon communities and practices Tuuli Kaskinen from Demos Helsinki gave us an inspiring presentation about how drastically we need to change the course and cut down the carbon emissions. We were glad to have the documentaries John Webster joining the meeting too. He is one of the two members from the last year’s team who will support the work of our team also this year.

I got a good feeling about the project with so many active people and great support from the British Council. It is a privilege to be member of the team! The examples from last year’s projects were interesting too. For instance the team was involved with the Operaatio maa (Operation Earth) TV series presented in Finland during last winter.

Our first task is to come up with three project ideas to make an impact on the climate change debate. In September the real hands-on work starts. I look forward to an inspiring summer with great ideas to suggest when the team formally meets again after the summer holidays. The best way to come up with new ideas is to change thoughts with old and new friends, family and anyone more or less interested about the topic. So be aware, you know what will be my favourite topic this summer during the picnic lunch and evening with sauna and some barbeque.