myclimate developed the educational project “Shape Your Trip” in 2019 to help show youngsters the way out of a dilemma. Young people’s desire to travel and explore the world is often at odds with their wish to protect the climate and the environment. The offer was developed in cooperation with Swiss Federal Railways and is supported by EnergieSchweiz, Swiss Youth Hostels and FAIRTIQ. “Shape Your Trip” is a multifaceted project consisting of a travel competition as well as lesson materials and information on sustainable travel.
Over the past few months, myclimate has expanded the offer, which comprises a comprehensive and freely accessible platform for students and teachers, to include a digital application. In addition, myclimate also programmed a web calculator for the participants of the project competition. This not only shows the complete carbon footprint of a planned trip, but also conveys direct approaches to climate-friendly optimisation by providing detailed information on the emission sources of various means of transport.
Link to the platform: Shape Your Trip
New Competition Starts
The “Shape Your Trip” travel competition offers school classes and individual participants the opportunity to boost their travel funds. Using the registration form on the project website, eligible participants can upload innovative and climate-friendly travel plans for their next holiday or class trip by 4 June 2020, for a chance to win attractive financial prizes and perks.
Registration link, further information and the terms and conditions of participation
“hereandhappy” – Switzerland’s Youth Analyse Their Generation’s Travel Behaviour
On the basis of “Shape Your Trip”, myclimate conducted ten workshops at seven vocational and secondary schools with a total of 166 students. The workshops aimed to get youngsters to analyse their travel behaviour and requirements and, on this basis, to create new holiday offerings in Switzerland.
Using different methodological approaches, the workshops fostered the students’ ability to develop innovations, while opening up a new perspective on Switzerland as a travel destination. In addition, particularly well-thought-out ideas get the chance to be realised as part of the “bleib hier” (“stay here”) project from the Swiss Touring Club’s (TCS) Mobility Academy.
The “hereandhappy” workshops were implemented with the help of our partners the TCS Mobility Academy (with the project “bleib hier”) and EnergieSchweiz (BFE), via the Coordination Office for Sustainable Mobility (KOMO).
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Young people today face a dilemma: On the one hand, they want to plan their first independent trips and enjoy their freedom. On the other, thousands of young people and young adults in Switzerland and across the world are organising climate strikes, through which they wish to make decision-makers more aware of the urgent need to take steps to protect the climate. This often gives them pause to think about their own travel behaviour and the associated environmental damage.
Franziska Steinberger, the project manager at myclimate responsible for the programme, goes into more detail: “The goal of ‘Shape Your Trip’ is to contribute to tackling this dilemma and to enable young adults to travel more sustainably, without throwing into doubt this social and cultural aspect of life. Every planned trip can be implemented more sustainably. However, this is seldom attainable with off-the-peg solutions.”