Funding brief

Green Steps ARK: https://ark.greensteps.me/about/

ARK stands for Activate body & mind, Restore ecosystems, Know your bioregion.

It connects experiential learning with digital coordination and impact tracking, extending education seamlessly from indoors into neighborhoods, municipalities, eco-and bioregions.

A place-based learning and stewardship platform with proven ecological impact

The ARK is an operational, scalable web-based platform that converts education and citizen engagement into measurable environmental and policy outcomes. It combines place-based learning, cooperative community action, and digital impact tracking to strengthen local stewardship while generating clear, reportable KPIs for public institutions and funders.

In an Austrian pilot project, ARK-supported pupil and citizen engagement directly contributed to the designation of more than a dozen new natural monuments — a policy-level result that earned the Lower Austrian Award for Environmental Protection and demonstrates the ARK’s ability to translate funded engagement into permanent ecosystem protection.

The problem

Public education and sustainability programs face persistent challenges:

• Excessive time spent indoors is aggravated by school information systems (SIS) which are designed to manage subject and lesson based learning indoors.
• Learning often remains abstract and disconnected from local reality causing students’ disengagement, a feeling of meaninglessness, and consequently poor grades and mental health issues.
• The impact of AI transforms learning and requires a shift from national to place- and person based curricula
• In immigration-heavy contexts (e.g. Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden), schools and governments struggle to build a shared sense of belonging and responsibility across linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity.
• Participation and engagement are hard to measure, making long-term funding and policy integration difficult.

What is missing in most programs is a shared, place-based learning infrastructure that connects education, community life, and local ecosystems — and makes participation and impact visible. Learning must be set free from an isolated schooling context and integrated with society at large.

It takes an entire village to raise a child.