BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Climate change continues to affect every corner of the world. Its impact is felt in the form of increasingly erratic climate events, such as increased intensity and frequency of flooding events and drought periods. Africa is one of the most vulnerable regions to the impacts of climate change, despite only accounting for 4% of global greenhouse emissions. At the regional level, 10 million Africans are affected by climate-related disasters on an annual basis, and about 90% of all disasters are weather and climate-driven. Acute shocks and stresses threaten to reverse the hard-won development gains, and therefore, it’s imperative to come up with strategies to address climate change, through actions aimed at mitigation and adaptation. Against this backdrop, individual countries are undertaking efforts to curb their carbon emissions across all sectors. Zambia is one of the countries that is leading such efforts. In the water sector, water and sanitation utilities are striving the build resilience and promote environmental management and energy efficiency measures. The World Bank is supporting utilities through the Utilities of the Future Program designed to ignite, materialize and maintain transformation efforts in WSS utilities to help them become a Utility of the Future — a future-focused utility, which provides reliable, safe, inclusive, transparent, and responsive WSS services through best-fit practices that allow it to operate in an efficient, resilient, innovative and sustainable manner.
It will be crucial to continue to offer support to water and sanitation utilities that are actively contributing to the fight against climate change through multiple versions. Complex problems require innovative solutions and the world is looking at young people everywhere to come up with breakthrough approaches.
THE CHALLENGE
As the world races to curb the impacts of climate change, the 2022 Utility of the Future Youth Global Challenge gives young people worldwide the opportunity to work on innovative solutions to address challenges and leverage opportunities experienced by a water and sanitation utility in Zambia as they aim to lower their emissions and reach the ambitious goal of net-zero carbon emissions; a key component of becoming a Utility of the Future. There are many proven strategies to lower carbon emissions in the water sector, but we are looking for young people everywhere to provide the utility with out-of-box strategies. This challenge gives participants the freedom to dream big and come up with great but also feasible solutions that the client can implement and that utilities everywhere else can get inspired by.
WHO CAN PARTICIPATE?
The competition is open to individuals, aged 18 – 35. Participants can be students, as well as people in the workforce or any other occupation. We are looking for some balance between your motivation for joining this challenge as well as some relevant experience in the water sector and dealing with climate change and promoting green management.
WHAT’S THE FORMAT?
Phase 1: The challenge will first open applications for individuals interested in being part of the challenge. Upon the close of the call for applications, the organizing team will review all submissions and choose participants that will move on to the next portion of the competition.
Phase 2: Applicants that move forward will be placed on different teams where they will be working together with other young people from all over the world on the case challenge. At this stage, all teams will be given all the materials needed for the challenge as well as supplemental resources to help them deliver high-quality outputs. Upon reviewing the output from this phase, three finalist teams will be chosen by a team of reviewers.
Phase 3: Finalists teams will be working on a pitch deck where they go more into detail about their proposed solutions to the water and sanitation utility. They will have the opportunity to consult with pitching experts to refine their presentations. The finalists will be delivering their presentations virtually at this year’s World Water Week at the Stockholm International Water Institution to take place from August 23-September 1. A panel of judges will choose the winning team, but the audience will also be given the opportunity to choose a winner through live polling.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
You can submit your application here! Let us know why you should be chosen as one of the challenge participants!
WHY PARTICIPATE?
Participants will get the network with young people worldwide who are just as passionate as about development issues and working closely on a real-case challenge that will contribute to problem-solving skill-building.
Finalists will be given a platform made up of an audience of leading industry experts, development practitioners, and environmental and climate change advocates.
The winning team will be invited to a closed session with World Bank and SECO experts on water and sanitation and join the network of finalists and winners of the annual UoF Global Youth Challenge.
The winning team will co-author a written piece that will be published on the World Bank website, highlighting the competition and the importance of environmental management and energy efficiency in the water sector.
Opportunity to advise on the implementation of the idea along with World Bank experts and utility staff (subject to previous analysis of the possibility/feasibility of implementation) - TBD
TIMELINE
July 12: Call for individual application launches
July 27: Call for individual application closes, and review of submissions begins
July 30: Accepted individuals are placed on teams and connected with their team members and given the materials for the case study
August 5: Submission of materials by all teams
August 10: Announcement of finalist teams
August 15: Session with pitch experts to refine presentation
August 23-September 1: Final presentation at SIWI’s World Water Week and announcement of winning team. The exact presentation date will be provided as soon as it is confirmed.
QUESTIONS & INQUIRIES
For questions, comments, and inquiries, please reach out to us at uof@worldbank.org