Climate Café

Report on the Climate Café - Topic: Hiking coaching

Departure at the end: Hiking coaching weekend with the Climate Café

From 23 to 25 May 2025, the Climate Café received so-called "hiking coaching" from netzwerk n, which - contrary to what the name suggests - is not about hiking, but about the internal structuring and alignment of groups.

The term of the Climate Café is coming to an end and the coaching was able to help find a good way forward for the last few months, offering an outlook for a satisfactory conclusion.

Various methods were used during the coaching, such as the "hurdle run", in which we first considered difficulties in completing the project and then solutions to them, or the "Kanban board", which was used to collect, organise and allocate upcoming tasks and which has also become established in the long term.

In this way, the Climate Café was able to benefit from the itinerant coaching provided and find a suitable path to a good end. At the end of the project, the focus will be on the scientific evaluation and on a Climate Café toolkit that can be used as a basis for possible follow-up projects.

The detailed report follows.

Climate Café - From knowledge to action

As a student project, the Climate Café is a pop-up café that regularly appears at various locations at the university. At the Climate Café, students can get to grips with the complex issues surrounding sustainability in a relaxed atmosphere.

The Climate Café offers a wide range of formats, from discussion tables and workshops to climate games. The scientific connection is provided by the WueLAB. The target group mainly comprises students, but employees of JMU and the student union can also participate and be emotionally involved. The topics are diverse and include environmental problems (biodiversity loss, extreme weather events, flight, etc.) as well as solution ideas and approaches (such as handprint vs. footprint, energy transition, agricultural transition, etc.) in relation to the climate crisis and related issues.

The aim of the project is to increase the visibility of the current challenges and to sensitise the student body to them. Students should be motivated to become part of the sustainable transformation themselves and actively help shape the coming changes. To this end, existing groups and projects related to sustainability at the university and beyond have the opportunity to introduce themselves and network at the Climate Café. After a visit to the Climate Café, students should no longer see the university as merely a place of education for their studies, but as a changeable, mouldable space that offers opportunities for participation and involvement. This promotes and anchors the culture of sustainability at JMU.

The project will initially run for one year. During this time, various spaces and their accessibility will be tested for the experiment. Collaboration with the Studierendenwerk, the Student Spokesperson Council and other partners will help the Climate Café to reach many students and thus successfully implement the experiment.