On January 15, 2020, we began implementing the Climate Labs project. This project aims to strengthen applied research and innovation capacities in 10 Latin American Universities in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia through co-creation laboratories for climate change mitigation and adaptation, accompanied by European expert institutions and Ashoka.

From March 3 to 5, 2020, we held our Kick-off meeting where representatives of the consortium institutions participated. The kick-off included executive management sessions, review of work packages, commitments, and deliverables, and the first workshops methodological transfer from European universities to Latin American ones.

When we formulate the project, we dream of generating changes within our institutions concerning how our university communities perceive, adapt or mitigate climate change. However, before changing, we must know what do we want to change? How do we want to change it? The kick-off was the propitious scenario to identify our universities’ current state, place ourselves at our starting point, and propose the impacts that we want to generate within our institutions and, of course, in the society that surrounds us. Carrying out this participatory and collaborative exercise in the kick-off meeting allowed the European institutions and Ashoka to plan the methodology better to implement knowledge and the development of the work packages.

Thus, on the first day of the Kick-off meeting, the University of Lorraine presented its experience on Living Labs and how the laboratory proposes solutions to territorial problems through applied research in coordination with the university, company, state.