Water Challenge 2025 – with SWP and VSA Young Professionals!

The Water Challenge is an initiative to address on-the-ground water-related issues through innovative and pragmatic solutions led by young people. Originally launched in 2019 by SWP Youth and by now their flagship initiative, for this 6th edition in 2025 SWP Youth and VSA Young Professionals decided to join forces. The main goals of this collaboration are to scale up the potential of the Water Challenge, reach a more diverse audience, and enhance the interaction between the young pioneers in Switzerland and abroad.

The Water Challenge consists of an annual call for micro-scale project proposals to solve contemporary, concrete challenges related to sustainable water management and providing youth in Switzerland and abroad an entry point to the professional water sector. Young people up to 31 years old are invited to submit their project ideas, which are carefully evaluated and selected by a youth-composed jury and advised by senior water professionals. 

Winning teams receive seed funding for the project implementation, along with high-quality guidance and mentorship from selected Swiss water experts (from academia, NGOs, public or private sector) to implement their project for one year.  

The Water Challenge stands for supporting innovative and bold ideas while addressing urgent issues and being well-adapted to the respective context. It not only fosters the exchange between youth from different cultures and countries, but also is open to a wide range of diverse water related issues, which significantly differ across the world. For the sake of encouraging an even broader diversity of challenges,  the newly established collaboration between SWP Youth and VSA Young Professionals, foresees two categories of prizes for the Youth Water Challenge 2025: an international prize, accepting proposals for implementation across the globe, and a Swiss prize, for project proposals specifically targeting issues related to the Swiss water context and market. 

We highly value the exchange which can be created between youth from Switzerland and from other countries, where learning, mutual empowerment and getting inspired from each other goes both ways. 

We look forward to a successful Water Challenge process of 2025 and encourage all interested stakeholders to support this initiative.