PLAN A: Action platform in the fight against climate change

2019 is a crucial year for our planet and its inhabitants. We are facing extreme weather, rising sea levels and global warming. 

Fortunately, there are solutions to create a green and sustainable future for all of us. Yet, organisations around the world are in dire need of financing to pursue their climate fighting agenda.

This is why we built Plan A. We connect businesses to climate action around the world, building a network of support for the organisations creating positive impact for our planet.

Plan A uses publicly available data to predict where and how climate change will hit the hardest. Having identified the issues, we take action by funding projects that address the most critical issues for a geography.

If scaled up, Plan A could become a strong and important bridge between the increasingly environmentally conscious private sector and civil society actors engaged in the fight against climate change.

Plan A addresses the current lack of funding faced by grassroot organisations committed to the fight against climate change. Under our Waste Management theme we provide community-driven initiatives with financing channels to expand their capacity to collect, reuse and upcycle waste. For example, we are currently supporting 6 waste management projects in Albania, Germany, Montenegro, Mozambique, Rwanda and the United Kingdom. These are all community-based initiatives that promote a paradigm shift towards a zero-waste circular economy and society. In aggregate, just these 6 organisations already face a €200,000 financing gap. This shines a light on the scope of action and financing necessary to address resource overconsumption and transform our disposable economy towards circularity.

Our goal is to provide every waste management initiative access to appropriate financing channels to upscale their impact and strengthen their transformational potential. Within the next year, we have set ourselves the objective to support 60 such waste management projects in order to reach a critical mass pushing for social change.

Above all, we serve the local communities which benefit from the projects run by our partner organisations. For example, our partner WATOTO Vision on Africa provides job opportunities for Gasabo District residents in Rwanda, especially women and teenage mothers who transform solid waste into handicrafts.

Furthermore, we closely collaborate with organisations at the forefront of the fight against climate change. Through technical and financial support, we help our partner nonprofits scale up their activities. By being members of the same community, nonprofits cross pollinate best practices and creative climate action programs. 

By relying on network effects, we create nodes and links between local action and global activism. Through this multiplier effect, local initiatives reach a community of 70,000 planet-conscious individuals and inspire action across borders.

Plan A is the first data-driven crowdfunding platform in the fight against climate change. We have developed an algorithm that utilizes publicly available satellite and field data to predict where and how climate change will hit the hardest. It is through these insights that we are able to support community-based projects around the globe achieve their objectives to create a more sustainable and livable home. 

As a global agent, we have been able to foster a collective climate action network of individuals, businesses, environmental organisations, scientists, innovators, and like-minded communities. We have established Plan A as an intercontinental instrument for change. This is possible, in part, by two key pillars: knowledge and education. Plan A has gathered a multitude of resources, information and articles to inform the general public about the issues that plague our planet today as well as steps that are being taken to reverse these effects. The Climate Academy serves as the primary outlet for Plan A to present and discuss the most up-to-date climate action projects, inventions, and scientific findings. 

Our objective is to provide funding for waste management initiatives and educational programs in an effort to support vulnerable communities from the ramifications of pollutants and waste products. More specifically, we have been working closely with projects such as promoting public health in Mozambique through safe waste management. Africa’s Foundation for Sustainable Development seeks to implement the Persistent Organic Pollutants project in different districts of Mozambique. Through our support we hope to help drive behaviour change regarding chemical and solid waste use and disposal, in an attempt to eradicate the problems that chemical pollutants pose. This will, in turn, lead to improvements in the surrounding environment and public health, especially for women and children. Through increased biodiversity in agriculture and the rise of education on the nutritional value of organic products and cultures, such projects highlight the benefits from revalorizing waste. 

The initiatives and partners that we carefully select exemplify what it means to be environmentally conscious while recognizing the important role that waste management plays in fostering a circular economy at a global scale.

Plan A is dedicated to create a comprehensive, community-driven platform that addresses the wide range of issues and themes related to climate change. To mobilize a wide audience, we rely on various channels to engage citizens, organisations and businesses. First, our platform describes our analysis of climate impacts by region and by theme, relating our insights to projects that offer concrete solutions to the issues identified. 

The initial analysis is based on our in-house algorithm.

Second, the Plan A Academy is a media platform to inform and raise-awareness among our community and beyond. Finally our network of volunteers, scientists and businesses converts this digital engagement for climate action into real-world solutions to the planetary challenges we face.

The innovativeness of our solution stems from our holistic approach. We are determined to exploit the full potential of available data-analysis technology combined to social mobilization to support the climate justice movement. By creating a symbiotic relationship between technology and community organising, we accelerate climate initiatives around the world and close the financing gap faced by climate-fighting organisations.

TBA

Our action platform answers a dire need to collectivize efforts towards achieving shared sustainability goals for social change and environmental stewardship across the globe. By relying on a cross-thematic multimedia approach, we provide an inclusive model for collective action. Waste management is both an upstream and downstream struggle to change behaviors and practices. By connecting to solutions at both ends of the spectrum that are spread around diverse geographies, we advance systemic transformation.

Plan A is currently serving 100,000 beneficiaries. This number will double to 200,000 beneficiaries in the next year. In five years, Plan A is planning to benefit 1 million people in five years from now.

The next milestones for the company are integration of industry and natural resources data to the platform, in order for the algorithm to predict also shifts in supply and demand for natural resources depending on climate changes' negative effects, as well as a community expansion to 200,000 individuals, 1,000 scientists, 1,000 businesses and 10,000 NGOs

Currently, our main challenge is access to financing.

We are currently fundraising.

10 people currently working on partnerships, events, fundraising, media content, design and data engineering.

Plan A's team combines a unique set of skills, related to the climate change fight and Plan A's solution, including climate change data analysis, climate change modelling, finance, business, design, science.

So far, we have partnered with climate-conscious businesses such as Ecosia in our effort to create a climate action network that spans the widest range of actors and stakeholders. We also work with larger established companies, such as Accenture, to expand our scope of action and engage the corporate sector with climate mitigation.

Plan A finances itself from taking relatively small (5 to 8%) commissions on the donations made by companies to our partner organisations. This allows to finance Plan A’s operations and team.

Plan A will breakeven in April 2021.

Plan A is currently scaling up its activities and would benefit from expanding its support base and operational capacity.

Network of companies committed to advance sustainability goals, such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. 

We already partner with environmental scientists, NGOs, community initiatives and green startups, as well as companies. We would like to expand this community of key climate change fighting stakeholders and innovators.

Plan A is committed to help local communities shift towards a zero-waste and zero-carbon lifestyle. For example, in Montenegro, the Zero-Waste Management initiative is developing an interactive education package to raise awareness about all aspects of a Zero-waste lifestyle. Plan A is partnering with this initiative to finance the development and the delivery of the education package to all 4th graders across the country.

Pushing for a zero-carbon local economy, the Green Cities initiative is currently building an air and water pollution monitoring tool to be used by local authorities and civil society. Through this tool, that Plan A is helping to finance, they will collect irrefutable evidence for setting up measures to improve Albania’s dire pollution problem. 

The GM Prize on Circular Economy would enable us to expand our community-based initiatives by recruiting more projects, such as the ones introduced here, on our platform and enhancing the capacity of our network.