The Grants & Meetings taskforce is in charge of looking for opportunities of funding or event participation that will support the goals of the Green Team. Even though the Green Team acknowledges the full support of the Champalimaud Foundation President, reaching out for external funding gives us an opportunity to showcase and test the potential impact of some of our projects, while applying to obtain funding for some of the projects that may present a higher risk of investment, using the funding opportunities for pilot projects or more ambitious endeavours. These opportunities for funding will always be agreed upon with the Foundation’s President, sharing all the relevant information on both the scope of the project and the funding agency.

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In September 2020, the Grants & Meetings task force submitted an application under the Sustainability On Call opportunity by the Gulbenkian Foundation. This application outlines a project for “EcoLabsPt (ELP): The Portuguese Roadmap for Life Science Green Labs”. The project encompasses the creation of a guide book that takes Life Science Labs staff through the steps necessary to transition into more eco-responsible scientific practices. The content used to create this guide book will be developed and pilot tested in CCU labs but also in partner Life Science Labs, recruited through the concomitant creation of a nation-wide network of Labs and their local equivalents of the Green Team @CCU.

 

The participation in meetings and events allows the Green Team to disseminate its work beyond the CCU and start creating a network of groups and institutions that share similar values and goals. 

In February 2020, the Green Team participated in the “Encontro Nacional de Investigação em Alterações Climáticas” at the Faculty of Sciences at ULisboa, where we presented a poster with our action plan for 2020. During the poster session, we received very positive feedback from other attendees, interested in knowing more about our mission and actions while sharing how their organizations were promoting green practices. 

 

In the context of sustainability, we identified another opportunity to showcase the Green Team: the Planetiers World Gathering taking place in Lisbon. Initially scheduled for April 2020, this is an international event for sustainable innovation with the mission to “provide society with the best digital, physical and technological platforms in order to accelerate sustainable development in three dimensions, environmental, social and economic”. Due to the current pandemic situation, this has now moved to an online format, with talks from different society actors (e.g. entrepreneurs, policy makers, scientists) whose joint efforts aim at creating impact on different levels having in mind the 17 UN’s sustainable development goals: raise awareness, close big deals and investments, impact consumption pattern, support sustainable innovations, and promotion of partnership and cooperation. Participation in such an event will allow the Green Team to become aware of state of the art initiatives and actions to achieve sustainability.

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Taskforce status: Ongoing