Many grassroots and community-based initiatives struggle to drive real-world change while managing the demands of a stand alone charity. And so, MakeWay launched the shared platform model in Canada, one of the first of its kind. It takes a lot of hard work to create positive and lasting change. The precious time and energy available to changemakers should be spent on making it happen. With the shared platform, more time and money goes towards achieving greater impact as projects benefit from sharing important administrative resources and expertise.
We host over 60 projects on our shared platform, all across Canada. Over the next few months, we’ll be sitting down with each of them to find out more about what they do and how they work. This week, we touched base with Jake Miller, Director of Project Neutral, an initiative that has developed an award-winning carbon calculator which gives users the knowledge and power to reduce their climate impact in less than five minutes.
What is your purpose? Project Neutral’s purpose is to transform Canadians’ climate concern into action, and mobilize a new community of climate leaders. Through our innovative carbon-benchmarking platform, we help people measure their household climate impact and inspire them to take action – both by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and becoming climate role models in their communities. We envisage a future where carbon impact measurements have found wide acceptance in society and are easily understood. We believe carbon measurements will be included in all purchases, renovations, event planning, services, rentals, and investments – to name a few examples. The climate impact of our all choices must be made visible. Project Neutral is that first prompt, that first measurement toward a carbon conscious future.
Where are you based? Project Neutral is based in Toronto, and we have partnerships in the Waterloo Region and London, as well as thousands of users across Ontario. Since location really matters when calculating an accurate carbon footprint, we’re proud to use Ontario-specific emissions factors to give our users the most accurate insights into their emissions.
How did you get started? Project Neutral was founded in 2010 by Karen Nasmith and Julie Dzerowicz and got its start within Civic Action’s Emerging Leaders Network. Project Neutral was originally conceived to operate with deep roots in communities and launched in two Toronto neighbourhoods: Riverdale and the Junction. We discovered our carbon footprint calculator was particularly valued by our participants. So much so, in fact, that we realized a gap existed for Ontarians who wanted to get real insight into their carbon emissions – there wasn’t an easy and accurate carbon footprint calculator for them, so we decided to make it. We still keep rooted in community and see our tool not merely as a calculator but as a platform carbon conscious groups can use to start taking personal action to reverse climate change.
What brought you to the MakeWay Shared Platform? We joined the platform just as we were undergoing a transition from a local, neighbourhood-based initiative to one with a larger mandate and bigger ambitions. Having the logistical support, experience, and guidance of the folks at MakeWay has allowed us to become a province-wide initiative. Our ambitions don’t stop there, however, and we see the shared platform as a way that a small project like ours can grow to have a national reach.
What exciting activities are coming up for you? We are very excited to be launching a set of school resources so that teachers and eco teams can use the Project Neutral calculator with students in grades 7-12. We’ve designed a teaching kit that will allow students to learn about climate change but also to reflect on their own behaviours and to begin imagining what our low-carbon future will need to look like in our daily lives. We’ve made sure our lesson plan works for students in a classroom or in a virtual setting. We aim to support teachers who are struggling to find lessons that can be delivered in-person and online. We also know that students are some of the most important climate advocates in society right now and we want to help them bring climate action home.
Find out more about the MakeWay shared platform model here.
