QS Impact
From Flood to Fortune
Indonesia's Youth Are Leading the Green Economy
By Anshaj Ahuja, QS ImpACT
18 June 2026
Bandung doesn't make the global headlines the way Jakarta does. But in this sprawling West Java city, sitting in the flood-prone Citarum basin, the climate crisis isn't a future threat, it's a present reality. Waterways choked with plastic. Air that stings. Low-income neighbourhoods that flood before wealthier ones do, and recover long after.
For young people here, the compounding effect of this is brutal. Limited jobs. Limited access to quality education. And if you're living with a disability, most of the training that does exist wasn't built with you in mind.
When Climate Crisis Meets Opportunity Gap
To tackle this, Solve Education, winner of the QS ImpACT Climate Education for Change Award 2025 (Organisation), developed the Ecopower programme.
Ecopower is an online, data-light platform that links climate education directly to economic opportunity, designed specifically for youth and people with disabilities (PwD) who've been left out of both conversations. Most climate education stops at the problem. Here, that's just the starting point.
The Part Most Green Programmes Skip
Ecopower pairs climate education with something most green programmes never touch: a real path to income.
Participants move through climate science, plastic pollution, and the circular economy, then into sustainable business design, financial literacy, and resource management, not as awareness, but as a toolkit they can actually use.
Accessibility as Foundation, Not Another Feature
Accessibility is the architecture, not an add-on. The platform is built from the ground up for learners with disabilities and those locked out of formal education, delivered online across a structured series of sessions that keeps data costs low and reach wide.
Expert webinars, one-on-one mentoring, and innovation showcases connect participants to educators and industry volunteers. Those relationships open doors to real markets and employer networks. Seed support helps participants take their first steps toward building actual businesses, not just pitching ideas into a void.
The result: 18,000 young Indonesians directly impacted, with an estimated 36,000 reached through secondary effects. Participants learnt about the green economy and started exploring its economic viability.
Micro-Businesses, Macro-Thinking
Through ideation sessions and DIY sustainable solutions workshops, participants develop micro-business concepts built around problems in their own communities: waste, flooding, overconsumption.
What makes these ventures significant isn't their size. It's that they're real, locally rooted, and built to generate income while addressing the environmental damage around them.
Graduation isn't the end of the relationship. Solve Education!'s Solve Work unit connects alumni to jobs and project opportunities. Ongoing coaching and promotion support those running their own ventures. That pipeline also cross-subsidises the free learning programme, so the model grows without pricing people out.
The Blueprint
The recognition matters less than what it signals: that equity-first climate education, the kind that treats income and inclusion as inseparable from environmental action, is producing results worth paying attention to.
The most durable climate solutions won't arrive from international summits. They'll come from people who know their communities from the inside and have been given real tools to act.
In Bandung, those people are already building. 18,000 of them and counting.
Are you building solutions in your community?
Applications for the QS ImpACT Awards 2026 are now open. Whether your work touches climate education, social equity or sustainable development, it deserves a wider audience.
Because the next generation of climate leaders is not waiting for permission. They are already building.
Apply Today: https://qsimpact.org/awards2026/
QS ImpACT is a UK-registered charity and the global SDG incubator for a better world. Our global community of young people grows and earns recognition for driving positive social and environmental impact. Through strategic collaborations with universities, organisations, and communities, we equip young leaders with the skills, networks, and platforms needed to turn purpose into action. To date, QS ImpACT has engaged young people across 120+ countries, contributing 235,000+ volunteer hours and impacting 383,000+ people globally.
The culmination of the 2025 calendar year was marked by the first ever QS ImpACT Youth Summit 2025, our flagship global sustainability event designed for and by young leaders. Held alongside the QS Reimagine Education Awards, the Summit brought together youth, universities, educators, and forward-thinking organisations to explore how leadership, technology, and innovation can accelerate progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Summit also featured the QS ImpACT Awards 2025, celebrating outstanding youth-led initiatives and innovations across sustainability, climate action, education, health, gender equality, and community impact. Together, these programmes highlight the power of young changemakers to drive meaningful change and address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.