Our green company
This activity invites students or clients to collaboratively design a mock eco-friendly company. In teams, they develop the company’s mission, vision, environmental goals, and core services. Each participant takes on a specific role aligned with their own skills and strengths, reflecting on how their contribution supports the company’s overall sustainability objectives.
Through this hands-on, creative process, participants explore what it means to build a purpose-driven organization and imagine sustainable career paths. The activity also helps them identify and develop the key (eco)skills needed to contribute to a greener future. Before implementing this activity, participants must know their strengths, knowledge, abilities, skills, values (their competences).
Inspiration for the tool
Creation of career professionals in Slovakia, party inspired by an NGO “Vyber správnu školu” (Choose the right school)
Rationale: Why is this needed?
This method is needed because it helps students connect their personal skills with real-world green challenges, fostering teamwork, creativity, and a future-oriented mindset focused on building a sustainable economy.
Objectives
By the end of the activity, clients and students will
- be aware of important skills for the 21st century – how to work in a team, how to present not only themselves but also the team as a whole
- develop communication skills, presentation skills, creativity, cooperation, cohesion,
- form ideas about the future world,
- learn how to set effective goals, but also a mission and vision for the future in the context of the green economy, how to contribute to a greener future.
- understand that the choice of a suitable career should be based primarily on the individual’s skills and interests.
Resources needed
Large sheet of paper for each participant (e.g. flipchart), crayons, markers, various magazines, post-its, glue, tape, other, e.g. also natural material, Information sheet – explanation of terms.
Activities
Step 1: You can briefly introduce the context of the green economy. You can distribute to each group an with text such as:
Climate change is arguably the greatest challenge of our time. As they cause environmental degradation, they pose a significant risk to the economy by reducing productivity and destroying jobs. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), “A green economy leads to greater prosperity and social equity while significantly reducing environmental risks and resource scarcity. In its simplest form, it is characterised by low carbon emissions, resource efficiency and social inclusion.” The aim is to promote a just transition towards environmentally sustainable economies and societies that create decent jobs and improve the living conditions of the most disadvantaged groups. Green economy jobs contribute to reducing energy, raw materials and water consumption, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, minimising or avoiding all forms of waste and pollution, and protecting and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity. The green economy offers a variety of occupations for all skill levels and job profiles. Nowadays, many companies are aware of environmental risks and strive to contribute to a greener future, and focus their vision, mission and goals on this. (Source: Euroguidance Centre, Slovak Academic Association for International Cooperation (SAAIC) – “How to work in the green economy…..”, 2022.)
You can alo use the the Introduction to green jobs and from the Padlet.
Step 2: Introduce and clarify the terms:
- Mission – Why the company exists
- Vision – The future the company wants to help create
- Goals – What the company wants to achieve (especially in terms of environmental impact)
Step 3: Divide the participants into small groups of 4 to 7 members.
Step 4: Invite the group to imagine your future in about 5 to 10 years (depending on the focus group). Each group imagines a future company (5–10 years from now) that is built on environmental values. Together, they decide on:
- What the company will do: services, products, or activities
- Name of the company
- A logo (drawn or made with pictures)
- What values guide the work of the company
- The vision, mission, and main environmental goals
Invite them to use flipchart paper to create a visual mock-up of your company – to be creative—draw, write, glue pictures or symbols. Materials such as markers, crayons, glue, magazines, and post-its can be made available.
At the same time, each of the participant is invited to think about what role, profession they will have in this company, taking into account their strengths, competences, and how their role, profession can contribute to environmental sustainability. In every company, there are important people in different roles, from managers to workers. Explain that their job is not to cover all roles, only those for which they have competences. This means, for example, if no one in the team has organizational and management competencies, they won’t describe the manager of the company. The bottom line is what roles they would be able to fill as individual members of your team. It is possible to incorporate roles, occupations and competences directly into the mock-up or post-its.
Participants have 30 minutes to complete the task.
Step 5: When the time is up, the group will introduce the company, its name, logo, vision, mission, goals, how the company will contribute to environmental sustainability. The roles/responsibilities of each team member are also presented (their role/profession in the company, why they have chosen this role, what their competences are or what they still need to acquire, and how they themselves can specifically contribute to environmental sustainability and a greener future).
Step 6: Reflection.
Reflections/Consolidation of learning
- How did you find working in the team?
- Was it difficult to create a vision, mission, goals in an environmental context?
- How is it in companies now, and how is it in your company now, and what will need to be taken into account in the future, what will need to be changed ?
- What about your professions, how do they work now, and what will need to be taken into account in the future as they change ?
- What can we do now?
- What competences do you have now, and what will you need in the future?