Teach the Future wins £100k grant to run Fund the Future

Fund the Future is our new high-profile advocacy campaign to secure commitments from all the major political parties to spend substantially more money retrofitting and rebuilding school buildings. Schools should be practical teaching and learning resources of how the built environment needs to be adapted to respond to the climate crisis and ecological emergency.

Teach the Future is one of five organisations across the UK that will receive £100,000 to boost green measures and reduce carbon emissions in schools.  

Teach the Future will use the £100,000 grant over the coming year to mobilise our supporters and individuals to contact their local MPs and parliamentary candidates, asking them to support the issue. We will be hosting a parliamentary reception, bringing together students, key stakeholders and elected representatives, with the aim of building cross-party support. We will also be supporting students and teachers to collect evidence of the poor state of their school and college buildings, amplifying their stories. Teach the Future is also hiring new student staff to lead on Fund the Future.  

Finlay, Campaign Coordinator at Teach the Future (age 18) says: “As a student, I’ve often seen environmental considerations presented as getting in the way of school planning, rather than being a crucial part of it. Decarbonising schools will send the right message to students about sustainability and inspire us to demand better from every building we use.”

Other winners include: Eco-Schools: Count Your Carbon Playground; Retrofit Action For Tomorrow: RAFT Zero Carbon Action Builder; Shropshire Good Food Partnership: School Food Web Climate Action; and Brighton & Hove City Council: Our Schools Our World.

The announcement by Let’s Go Zero – the campaign uniting schools across the UK to be zero carbon by 2030 – comes as schools are being given a higher focus by policymakers for being ‘the change we want to see’ in communities finding ways to be more energy efficient, nature-friendly and on the road to zero carbon.  

Alex Green, Head of Let’s Go Zero says: “Through this Zero Carbon Fund we have discovered some really bold and innovative projects that will help schools implement exciting and impactful solutions which bring about longstanding change in educational settings. We are delighted that we are among the five brilliant winners.

“We’re incredibly excited to see what sort of changes will be made over the next year by each of the five winners to help schools make great strides in their journey to being zero carbon.”

Let’s Go Zero’s ‘Zero Carbon Fund’ is a one-off fund to help these winning initiatives scale up their innovative work with schools as quickly as possible.

All schools in the UK can join Let’s Go Zero here: https://letsgozero.org/join/

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