Community Energy River

Community Energy River: Strengthening Energy Democracy

We envision a society of engaged citizens where everyone creates a positive environmental impact and participates equally in addressing the climate crisis. We approach this challenge through interdisciplinary and creative methods, guided by our core values: collective action, individual responsibility, aesthetics, knowledge, and joy.

Our activities advance the Sustainable Development Goals related to energy by promoting energy saving, local energy production and consumption, and energy democracy. Through these efforts, we contribute to a sustainable future while helping to alleviate energy poverty.

We learn by playing, we become active citizens by learning!

How can we envision a sustainable future without planting the seeds of awareness and understanding in today's younger generations? Recognizing education's transformative power, we prioritize education since 2018, designing and implementing experiential environmental education workshops that unite art with scientific knowledge about energy as interconnected elements in youth activation.

We believe knowledge drives action. The more we understand, the more motivated we become to protect our planet and our lives upon it. The sooner we act, the greater our impact can be.

We believe in the power of "togetherness"! Achieving our goals requires collective effort - like electrons, we are drops of water that need the ocean to become a wave.

Member of the Greening Education Partnership

Since December 2024, we have been a member of the Greening Education Partnership (GEP), UNESCO's global initiative highlighting education's critical role in addressing the climate crisis.

#Learn through play
#Become active citizens
#Energy in the hands of citizens!

Play, participation and inclusion form the foundation of all our educational programmes.

Our approach centers on lived experience and authentic expression when tackling complex challenges like climate change, improving energy efficiency in school buildings, promoting energy saving, developing energy cooperatives, and advancing democratic education.

All our educational programmes are designed to:

• raise awareness about the climate crisis
• foster collaborative teamwork skills
• provide hands-on experience with real environmental challenges
• develop problem-solving abilities through Problem-Based Learning methods

We achieve these goals through diverse interactive techniques:

• dynamic group interaction and dialogue
• inquiry-based research activities
• creative integration of art and science
• artistic and physical expression
• theatre game
• immersive role-playing experiences

Aligned with the New European Bauhaus

We integrate the three fundamental pillars of the New European Bauhaus (NEB) into everything we do: sustainability, inclusiveness and art & culture. Through this creative, interdisciplinary framework, we join a Europe-wide movement that uses collaboration and co-creation to reimagine how we live and address pressing social challenges.

We launched our mission during the 2018-2019 school year with the pilot program "Inspection and Recording of School Building Conditions with Student Participation" supported by NCESD (National Center of Environment and Sustainable Development) and the Berlin-based association Respect for Greece, across ten Athens Municipality schools. This experience gave us profound insights into building needs and revealed how school buildings serve as living laboratories for energy saving and sustainability education.

Building on this foundation, we expanded our research and educational program design to include energy saving and renewable energy sources. In 2020, we added energy cooperatives through our workshop "Energy in the Hands of Citizens," officially approved by the Institute of Educational Policy (IEP). Despite pandemic challenges, we adapted with online sessions, never losing sight of our mission.

By 2021, we embraced a holistic vision of schools as communities. Collaborating with ANTIGONE-Information and Documentation Center on Racism, Ecology, Peace and Non-Violence, we co-authored the educational guide "The School Community Protects the Climate," published in December 2022 and featured in IEP's skills workshops.

Our breakthrough came in 2024 with our first Erasmus+ project "Sustainability and Energy Use Athens-Berlin" enabling us to develop innovative workshops and offer them for free to public schools across Attica in collaboration with the "Schools for Climate" Network.

2022-2023: 702 students across 18 schools experienced our 40 workshops
2023-2024: 1.320 students across 31 schools experienced our 74 workshops
2024-2025: 1.944 students across 39 schools experienced our 104 workshops

These numbers reflect the growing recognition and impact of our work. 

Our vision for next year: reaching even more students to share ideas, emotions, visions, and action plans together!