Hi Melissa,
Can you please introduce yourself in few sentences?
Hi, I am Melissa Capcha, I am originally from Peru but based in Germany since 2018. In Peru, I obtained a degree as an Environmental Engineer and I have been promoting projects to increase awareness in our society about climate change. I am currently a master candidate on Sustainability, Society and the Environment and in parallel running a Peruvian based NGO Centro de Innovación Climática y Sostenibilidad. I am also promoting some aside projects too, applying education and innovation in the climate change sphere as part of my experience with the Climate KIC program and as a natural entrepreneur and change maker.
Why did you choose to apply to be Climate KIC Journey fellow?
I knew about Climate KIC since a couple of years ago, and I always wanted to participate in one of the programs they offer. For me, innovation is the perfect way to tackle and create solutions to climate change. Because of that, I applied to the Summer Program: Journey 2020 from Climate-KIC. Overall, it was one of my best experiences since I moved to Germany. Been part of the Alumni Community from Climate KIC allows me to grow my network for future collaborations. As part of the Climate-KIC community, I was able to participate to get funds through the Alumni PGM Micro-Awards to start to develop my project-idea, which is great.
What is your experience of the program? Did the program meet your expectations?
The Journey 2020, because of the COVID-19 restrictions, happens virtually. Even though, for me, it was a great experience. The program involved many aspects, coaching, mentoring, workshops, and more. The atmosphere always was great, I always felt inspired by my coaches and peers. I was lucky to share with some of the most talented and change-makers persons from everywhere.
Your initiative was recently selected to receive funding from the EIT Climate-KIC Alumni Micro-Award. Congratulations! Can you please tell us more about this initiative?
Yeah, it is amazing! To have won the award is a great signal, on one hand, a recognition of my skills in designing proposals but also shows my commitment towards solving environmental problems in our society. Since the Journey, I positioned the topic “sustainable construction” because I believe if we create a more construction sector, we will be able to reduce the CO2 emission that produces climate change, in a great fraction. With the Micro-Award, I am developing a virtual game, together with the Kiel regional team of Cradle to Cradle. The aim of the virtual game is to increase awareness in our society, where students, pupils and professionals, and citizens can play and by playing discovering the importance of the use of sustainable materials for building. And how our choices affect the environment and our community, local and globally. We aim to have the beta version by the end of February 2021 and the final version in April/May 2021.
For the Climate –KIC journey you also developed project Urban Click? Can you tell us more about it?
Yes, Urban Click, is an initiative we created in the team for the Journey program 2020. By that time July/August 2020, we wanted to tackle the issues of reuse and recycle of secondary materials from construction and demolition, in the construction sector. However, we continued working on this project idea, and we currently developed it further. Urban Click has become a project, the four people working on this, we believe we have a powerful idea in our hands. We want to innovate; we want to work towards the promotion to a “circular construction sector”. As Urban Click, our aim is to create a user interface platform that helps to connect the stakeholders not only to buy and sell recycled and used materials but also to exchange data and knowledge. We are currently applying to competitions in order to obtain funds to help us to implement it. For more information, you can visit our youtube channel. You can also reach out to us by email, urbanclick.rebuildup@gmail.com.
Thank you for the interview 🙂