Climate-KIC organizes Journey since 2010 every year in several countries at a time, so they can bring together a body of students, who feel their main goal in life is to make a difference. But what does this mean? Does not everybody makes a difference somehow?
Difference, the word in itself, is strange to analyze. When you subtract two numbers, the result is a difference. When you look at two people, in between them there is difference. When you lift your fingers, you are different from the picture you were giving just a minute ago. However, the meaning we are looking for here, is the difference in life, lifestyle, and values. The people, who came to participate in Journey have similar views on what should be done, in order to make our planet liveable, for a longer time than just a few more centuries. They think that the problem is the attitude and inaction, so they changed their own attitudes and actions in such a way, that now they are fighting for the benefit of our Earth.
Every student of Journey arrived with some kind of idea, about what they can do, what they want to do to eliminate or at least decrease the problems of climate change. They are here from all around the world, for example Malaysia, Italy, Russia, etc, because it is a problem of all of us. As there are many things that could be improved upon, and they arrived with just as big of a range of ideas, Journey tries to centralize their thoughts, and helps them by giving their dreams a real structure.
Therefore, in these few weeks, they learn how to put their thoughts into practice. The lecturers introduce them to climate change challanges, entrepreneurship skills and the coaches demonstartes for them the advantages of working in a diverse team. They show the participants the right way to start a successful startup, and how business reacts to climate change. The programme of Journey includes introduction to the workings and uses of business model canvases, one-pagers, financial templates and climate impact tools. In the end of their journey many of them will have a possible startup plan, that they could actually run if they choose to. Journey already generated more than 250 business ideas in the last six years, and we do not have the results of 2017 yet to add, as the event is currently in motion
The lecturers are all experts in their fields, and some of them are also the CEO-s of their own successful startups. They are here to give an impression of their own ideas, the problems of climate change and to further knowledge on the subject, and to concretize the problems of Hungary as well, even though our problems in relation to the enviromental issues are similar to those coming from different countries. Journey implies how things could be done, and in some cases how it is done, and gives just the right amount of push and advice to these initiative individuals to help in the building of zero carbon economies and climate resilient societies.
All in all, Climate-KIC organizes its events, just like they organize Journey, in order to help make a difference, and help those people who can make these dreams real. Climate change is a real issue, and everybody should start to act accordingly, and start looking for ways to deal with the impacts, just as our participants do.