CtC

Challenge to Change is an international NGO, established in the UK in 2008, working primarily in Vietnam. Since its inception the organisation has focused on climate change issues, supporting poor communities to adapt their livelihoods to the local impacts of changing climate in Vietnam, whilst at the same time persuading those who contribute most to climate change, especially in the UK, to take responsibility for reducing global carbon emissions.

Since 2008 the organisation has worked in Da Nang, Quy Nhon, Can Tho, Quang Tri, and Ha Giang Provinces of Vietnam, in coastal and mountainous, rural and urban areas. In 2012 the organisation is broadening its focus to sustainability issues, including climate change. There are two sides to the majority of current global sustainability issues: on one hand, powerful elements of the global system pursuing unsustainable activities for economic gain, and on the other hand poor or disempowered communities who normally experience the first and greatest impacts of such activities within their daily lives.

Challenge to Change addresses both sides of each issue, and links them. For example it uses experience in Vietnam to inform the UK public about the impacts of CO2 emissions on distant, vulnerable communities; and it informs these vulnerable communities about the global causes of climate change. Our goal is sustainable systems which ensure that the well-being of poor, vulnerable communities, and of future generations, is not undermined by the pursuit of short-term economic gains.