Gesa Maschkowski has been nominated for Environmental Hero of the Year!
Gesa Maschkowski has been nominated for Environmental Hero of the Year for her work with Bonn in Wandel - you can support her nomination with your vote
For 15 years, Gesa Maschkowski has been turning Bonn into a transformation laboratory. She is co-founder of “Bonn im Wandel” and the SoLaWi Bonn, has launched the network Essbare Stadt, trained Bonn flower ambassadors and coordinates the urban change platform bonn4future.de with hundreds of articles, films, dates and initiatives.
With “Bonn4Future – Wir fürs Klima” (Bonn4Future – We for the Climate), it launched the largest participation procedure in the city. It combines scientific knowledge with practical action. She is convinced that change is best achieved when people get the chance to shape it together.
Gesa has been nominated for Environmental Hero of the Year, which is the highest award in Germany for civic engagement. The award is presented by the national organisation Deutsche Umwelthilfe. By nominating her, Umwelthilfe is recognizing the achievements and flagship projects built up over the past 15 years with the local Transition Initiative, Bonn im Wandel e.V. Over time, those initial sustainability flagship projects have grown into networks of trust that can make a difference. So she activated thousands of people and initiated concrete political changes.
A key factor was our success with the award-winning participatory process “Bonn4Future—We for the Climate,” which Gesa led from 2020 to 2023. This initiative gave rise to the Bonn Climate Neighborhoods, the City of Bonn’s Climate Dashboard, the Climate Ticket, and the sustainability platform www.bonn4future.de, among other outcomes. This makes “Bonn4Future—We for the Climate” one of the few partcipatory processes in Germany that has also had a political impact.
Here, you ́ll find a short Talk about Bonn4Future - We for the climate in English at an UNRISD Worskhop in 2023:
With the prize money, Gesa and her teammates would launch a “neighbourhood” program under the motto: Talk, Listen, Dream, Act.
We would be thrilled if you support her and also share the news. Here’s the link for voting: https://l.duh.de/gesa. It runs until December 1st 2026, and the winner won’t be announced until March 17th 2027. Wishing her and the team all the best!