Can you imagine if you could magically multiply your Christmas gifts?

This festive season, we’ve been given the chance to do just that, turning one gift into double the impact!

By taking part in the Christmas Challenge, your support can be doubled in value between the 28th November and the 5th December – helping us double the chance of a Carbon Literate future.

The Christmas Challenge

We are excited to announce that we have been selected by The Big Give to take part in their Christmas Challenge 2023.

A match funding campaign that will run for one week, from the 28th November – 5th December 2023, the Christmas Challenge is the UK’s biggest match-funded campaign. For seven days, supporters of participating charities are offered the opportunity to double their donations and make an extraordinary difference to the world’s biggest challenges.

Throughout these seven days, any donations made to The Carbon Literacy Trust will be matched by supporting organisations, therefore doubling the impact and helping your donation go even further in supporting our cause.

We are delighted to have secured match funding from our founding sponsor Westford Mill, part of Beechfield Brands, so the first £10,000 of donations will be doubled by Westford Mill. We were then selected by the Reed Foundation to receive further ‘Champion’ funding! This unlocked an extra £5,000 of match funding for us.

However, without the generous support of public donations, we won’t be able to unlock any of this £15,000 of match funding!

So, without further ado, introducing our public fundraising campaign:

Carbon Literacy Goes Global!

Last year, The Carbon Literacy Project ‘doubled’ in size! In 2022, our 10th anniversary year, we certified as many learners in a 12-month period as it had taken the previous 10 years – from 25,000 to 50,000 learners certified as Carbon Literate. This year has been another great year for the Project, thanks in large part to the support of our generous donors in our last fundraising campaign.

In our very first match funding campaign by the Big Give this April, we launched: “Carbon Literacy Double”. We identified that our £80,000 target would have been necessary to double in size again in 2023. Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, we raised just under £15,000 of donations, unlocking an incredible £30,000 total with match funding.

A clear testament to the power of these donations was that, with 3/8ths of the total budget unlocked, we have still exceeded the equivalent of 3/8ths of growth this year!

We estimate we will have grown from 50,000 to 80,000 certified learners by the end of the year, an increase of 62.5% (or 5/8ths), so every penny counts in terms of helping more people than ever become Carbon Literate.

Securing donations in this way contributes towards our goal of reaching more people than ever, spreading an endemic and impactful zero carbon culture nationwide.

However, in 2024, our sights are now set beyond national… to global!

Our aim for going global

Through the Carbon Literacy Christmas Challenge, our fundraising target is a total of £30,000 – £15,000 from public donations, and £15,000 from the help of our Big Give Champions, Beechfield and Reed. With the help of this fund, our aims are threefold:

Breadth

To catalyse action on climate at an international level. This year, we hit a milestone whereby Carbon Literacy has now been delivered on all seven continents. 2024 is the year in which we wish to work with more nations in each continent. We aim to deliver courses in 5 new nations on each continent where possible, measuring and reporting on this monthly total.

Depth

To provide global audiences with the knowledge, skills and motivation to act on climate change, by adapting our proven Sector Toolkit courses to new national contexts; assisting the development of new initiatives relevant to these contexts and initiating a cascade of action within those nations. In doing so, we hope to work not only in new locations, but more in-depth within those new locations.

By supporting the development of new initiatives and adapting Toolkit courses to new contexts, we will measure the number of new courses being delivered within proven sectors in different nations. We aim for courses across five different sectors in each nation.

A global value

Finally, through continued global advocacy, we aim to instil Carbon Literacy as a core competence and value, not just across the UK but worldwide. As a result of a global increase in learners having greater access to our unique model of education, we predict our numbers to increase steadily, leading to a total of 130,000 citizens certified as Carbon Literate by the end of 2024.

Due to our requirement for both an individual and group carbon reduction pledge, we predict 260,000 actions pledged to directly reduce emissions and tackle climate change, with an impact of approximately 468,000 tonnes of C02e saved.

Why?

We know that Carbon Literacy is a proven and reliable tool for creating positive cascades of action – but the systems-level shifts we need for a liveable future can’t happen if we’re only creating change in the UK. That’s why the time has come to create a global network of impassioned Carbon Literate citizens.

Climate change respects no borders, so Carbon Literacy and the resulting low-carbon culture change across borders is crucial if we are to justly and swiftly decarbonise our society. We aim to empower people with the knowledge and skills they need to communicate the benefits of climate action in everyday language, in their local communities; activating new sections of the global population who serve to be the most impacted but least empowered to take action on the climate crisis.

Where will the money go?

All funds raised via the Christmas Challenge Match Fund will directly go toward facilitating the delivery of Carbon Literacy at scale. This fund will enable us to grow and expand as a project, creating new positions on our team that align with our ambitions to break into new sectors and geographies, and continuously develop Carbon Literacy around the globe.

We have budgeted £18,000 towards staff costs of delivering this project, including running costs and advocacy, and the remaining £12,000 towards subsidies for each Toolkit that will be adapted to each new nation.

Save the date!

With only seven days to make a donation that will have double the impact, we encourage you to save the date of the Christmas Challenge Match Fund, so you have the best opportunity to support our campaign.

• Find out more about the Carbon Literacy Double, and donate from the 28th November.
• Have a question? Get in touch at giving@carbonliteracy.com.
• Interested in finding out more about other ways to support or partner with us? Book a call with Emily, our Fundraising Officer. We would be happy to discuss longer-term partnership opportunities, such as sponsorship or joining our Partner Scheme!

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