Team serenity

Why as a team did you choose to focus on this challenge?

Our team decided to do climate change, wo chose this challenge because climate change is a serious global issue that should be taken care of immediately before it's too late. We made the decision to link in transportation with climate change. We chose to do this because transport is used a lot in our society today, usually we are told that transportation is bad for the environment but we are not often offered the support to be part of the solution.

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What do you know now about the challenge that you didn't know before?

I wasn't aware that transportation had such a big impact on the climate as it does. Global transport realise 7.3 billion metric tones of CO2 into the atmosphere. I know that Ireland is striving to have at least one million electric cars on the road by 2023 but I can't see this happening in 7 years with the price and lack of services (charging points) for electric cars, especially in Ireland.

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What have you learnt about your Hero?

We made our hero a 21 year old male college student called Joe Smith. He lives in Waterford but attends college in Galway, he generally struggles with traveling to college as he doesn't have a car and student accommodation is expensive. He could take the bus but public transport is often unreliable and expensive, in Ireland. He picks up work at a bar, €12.22 per hour, when he has time off college to pay for college fees and household bills. He often has a lot of anxiety about his appearance but also about our climate and trying to be sustainable.

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If you could improve one thing for your Hero what would that be?

I would improve the public transport links for my hero. Whilst public transport is expensive, to some, a lot people rely on it to get from point A to point B. Cars, particularly electric cars, are very expensive for people with jobs and a house but are even more expensive for young college students. I think it's unrealistic to expect college student to wait for a bus that might not even coming along at the correct time and we don't even have a train that travels to inner city routes, such as Galway.

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Do you have any ideas for a potential solution? No matter how raw, share them with your Mentors for feedback.

If more people, including our hero, could rely on public transportation this would help reduce our carbon emissions instead of cars that realise a lot of carbon per car journey, If more people were to use public transport you would be able to reduce the cost of a bus, train etc fee because more people would use public transport making more money. We frequently hear about the lack of consistency for public transport, especially buses, in Ireland do if we make the schedule more often this would help make public transport more dependable.

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Ask your Mentor anything …. This is a chance to ask your Mentors a direct question relating to your Big Idea.

The government are currently pushing the Irish citizens to purchase electric cars because then are better for the environment but yet electric cars in Ireland cost up to €47,500. I understand you can't do anything about the price of electric cars in Ireland but what I would like know is if you think a scheme for electric cars would be a good idea? It would act a support scheme for those, who can't afford an electric car, looking to be more stainable in how they travel.