Education & Work in Europe: the projects changemakers recommend

The selection

• Atelier PaysanRenage, France“A cooperative born in Isère, L'Atelier Paysan helps farmers design and build their own tools, with open-source plans and training courses, towards technological sovereignty for peasant farming.”Recommended by Paul Emilieu Marchesseau
• Audrey BourolleauLévis-Saint-Nom, FranceRecommended by Constance Albanel
• Bernard StieglerParis, France“A philosopher of technology (1952-2020), Bernard Stiegler saw every tool as both remedy and poison. He championed an economy of contribution in which everyone becomes a producer of knowledge again.”Recommended by Paul Emilieu Marchesseau
• Birdgirl (Mya-Rose Craig)Bristol, UK“Mya-Rose opens birdwatching and nature to communities that were too often kept outside.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• CarbocultureHelsinki, Finland“Farm waste turned into stable carbon. A modest, useful answer to a loud problem.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• Ellen MacArthur FoundationLondon, UK“Ellen gave the circular economy its language. That language went on to shape real policy.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• FairphoneAmsterdam, Netherlands“Bas showed that a phone can be built for repair and with fair sourcing. The whole industry feels the pressure.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• Final SparkLausanne, Switzerland“Computing on living neurons sounds impossible. They let scientists try it, from anywhere.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• Florence RizzoParis, FranceRecommended by Constance Albanel
• Fonds ExploreConcarneau, France“They fund the expeditions that help us understand a world we are still learning to protect.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• François MarchesseauChampdenier, France“An organic farmer since the 1980s, François Marchesseau chose to take charge of processing his own harvests.”Recommended by Paul Emilieu Marchesseau
• Gesda FoundationGeneva, Switzerland“They look ahead to where science and diplomacy will collide. Patient work, and necessary.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• Grain de SailConcarneau, France“A company that runs decarbonised freight for real, out of Saint-Malo, across the Atlantic.”Recommended by Simon Bernard
• Knepp Wildland / Isabella TreeDorset, UK“They let a worn-out farm go wild, and the turtle doves and nightingales came back. That story changed how I think about land.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• Low-Tech LabConcarneau, France“Every solution they test is published open source. The knowledge belongs to everyone, and that is what stays with me.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• Lucas Davaze, Médiation ClimatGRENOBLE, France“He takes people to stand on a dying glacier. Climate stops being an idea and becomes a memory they keep.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• makesenseParis, France“They put collective intelligence to work for changemakers, two hours at a time.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• Malene LundenSamsø, DenmarkRecommended by Søren Hermansen
• Muriel Richard-NocaLausanne, SwitzerlandRecommended by Katy Foraz
• Nicolas NovaGenève, Switzerland“Nicolas taught designers to think like anthropologists. Their work matters more for it.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• NotplaLondon, UK“Seaweed packaging you can eat or compost. It looks like common sense, and we had forgotten it.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• Novo Nordisk FoundationCopenhagen, Denmark“The scale of their giving is enormous. I respect that so much of it goes to the health of ordinary people.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• Ocean AliveSetúbal, Portugal“Raquel hands the protection of the seagrass to the fisherwomen who know the estuary best.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• Philippe MeirieuLyon, France“An educationalist and a figure of progressive education, Philippe Meirieu defends a school where pupils search, experiment and build their own knowledge, and he always ties learning to democracy.”Recommended by Paul Emilieu Marchesseau
• Plastic OdysseyMarseille, France“Simon's ship goes from port to port and shows coastal towns how to turn their plastic into something they can use locally.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• Proxima FusionMunich, Germany“A European path to fusion that runs continuously. It is a bet, and I am watching it closely.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• SailcoopVannes, France“They make crossing the Atlantic by sail a real option again. I like that.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• Sara TurettaCernavodă, Romania“Sara Turetta decided, before turning 30, that she would devote her life to helping animals. She left her job in advertising after a trip to Romania that had shaken her deeply, opening her eyes to the tragedy of stray animals beyond any control and the brutality with which dogs were treated. She then founded Save the dogs and other animals, a foundation active in Italy and Romania, dedicated to rescuing dogs and other animals from the violence of a world that treats them as invisible. Her love for animals turned into concrete action. Her work is immense and unrelenting, and it allows thousands of dogs and other animals to escape a horrific fate.”Recommended by Ilaria Gaspari
• Svalbard Global Seed VaultSvalbard, Norway“A cold mountain holding more than a million seeds. The most patient insurance humanity has.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• Under The PoleConcarneau, France“They dive where science cannot easily reach, and they share everything they find.”Recommended by Florian Guillaume
• VelaParis, FranceRecommended by Simon Bernard
• WindcoopLorient, FranceRecommended by Simon Bernard
• Yves CittonParis, France“A professor at Université Paris 8, Yves Citton thinks of attention as an ecology: a scarce resource, captured by the media, that we must cultivate together as a shared environment.”Recommended by Paul Emilieu Marchesseau
• Éditions WildprojectMarseille, France“Founded in Marseille in 2008, the publishing house Wildproject brought the great texts of ecological thought into French and laid the foundations of the French environmental humanities.”Recommended by Paul Emilieu Marchesseau
• Éliane Vogel-PolskyBrussels, Belgium“Because she used strategic litigation to establish gender equality as a fundamental EU principle, and because she showed how a single well-crafted legal case can reshape an entire constitutional order.”Recommended by Alberto Alemanno