International. Low Carbon City, a Colombian initiative, won the social innovation award from the Echoing Green organization in the United States. This is the first time in 30 years of the organization that a project created by Colombians wins.
2879 projects from 164 countries participated in the call. The recognition was received by Juliana Gutiérrez and Juan Manuel Restrepo, co-founders of Low Carbon City.
"We continue to perceive climate change as an isolated phenomenon that occurs at the North Pole and affects polar bears. But that's not the case. We are living the consequences in our cities with increasingly extreme climatic phenomena and it is still difficult to understand that it is we in the cities who contribute the most to the generation of emissions. If we change the way we move, the products we consume and the way we act, we can generate great transformations. In this sense, citizens have a large part of the solutions in our hands," said Juliana Gutiérrez, Director of Low Carbon City.
Low Carbon City is a global, citizen-led movement that creates collective solutions to address climate change and promotes emission reductions in cities. Since December 2015 it has mobilized more than 15 thousand citizens through workshops, forums and urban interventions around the world. The organization has a network of more than 90 cities working to share knowledge and build low-carbon neighborhoods.
Echoing Green supports tomorrow's transformative leaders and helps them accelerate their impact. Over the past 30 years it has supported more than 750 social entrepreneurs around the world. Among the projects supported are Teach for America, One Acre Fund, City Year and a project led by Michelle Obama, former first lady of the United States.
