2,000-Person Community Challenge — Week 5 Recap | The Challenge Keeps Growing

The 2,000-Person Challenge reached Week 5—almost a full month in.

Thirty-five members took action this week and submitted 63 task reports. But more than the numbers, we want to remember the scenes behind them: team dinners after work, cross-team meetups where people laid out real work problems, and members opening Coffee Chat slots so that people still finding their direction had someone to talk to.

Teams Still Met Online, and Some Went Straight to Dinner After Work

Teams continued to hold online meetups this week, talking about work, careers, and sustainability—or simply taking time to get to know one another.

Team E brought the conversation offline. On Friday after work, members went straight to dinner, setting aside time they could have spent resting at home to talk with one another. That is not easy, and we really appreciate it.

What we value is not simply that another event took place. It is that people who were still unfamiliar online chose to sit down over a meal and talk about work and life. The next time a problem comes up, there may be one more person they can say hello to and ask.

Cross-Team Meetup: Putting the Hard Questions on Green Electricity and Decarbonisation on the Table

Last Wednesday’s cross-team online session featured Jeff and Michael sharing practical challenges around green electricity and decarbonisation.

The discussion covered Scope 3, supply-chain carbon management, green-electricity procurement thresholds and certificates, as well as the harder questions: how to set decarbonisation targets, communicate with senior leadership, and keep implementation moving under different constraints.

A few participants shared:

“Beyond the practical analysis of decarbonisation pathways and green-electricity procurement, the questions in the Q&A—how to set targets and persuade senior leaders—were very close to the realities of work.”

“It was a field I had not encountered before, and some parts were hard to follow, but I learned a great deal from hearing everyone share their experience.”

One member said they had mostly viewed these issues from the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises, and hearing other positions gave them a new perspective. Another member with experience in the certificate field realised that their knowledge might be helpful to people working through green-electricity procurement.

That may be the best part of a cross-team meetup: you do not have to be an expert in the topic to join. Some people bring hands-on experience; others arrive with questions. In the conversation, an experience that once felt ordinary can turn out to be precisely the information someone else needs.

Four New Coffee Chat Hosts

Benny, Sharlene, Yongxin, and Tommy joined the Coffee Chat directory this week. Their paths are quite different, giving members several new directions to explore in conversation.

• Benny: From chemical engineering and manufacturing decarbonisation to leading sustainability at a financial holding company, Benny is familiar with ESG strategy, decarbonisation practice, and sustainable finance. He is also happy to discuss what it takes to make systems work in a company’s day-to-day reality.
• Sharlene: An international development consultant and Deputy Director at a UK consulting firm, Sharlene focuses on supply-chain human rights, forced labour, and business and human rights. She is a great person to talk with about overseas work, international organisations, or human-rights due diligence.
• Yongxin: With nearly 10 years in sustainability, Yongxin has worked in consulting, NGO advocacy, and international cooperation, from Thailand to other parts of Southeast Asia. Local development, the circular economy, climate finance, and corporate ESG strategy are among the topics she knows well.
• Tommy: Tommy has worked in sustainability consulting in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and the United States. He has also contributed to Taiwan climate-risk disclosure regulations and decarbonisation-pathway projects. Sustainable finance, international trends, sustainability work, and studying abroad are all good subjects to bring to a conversation with him.

If you are still figuring out where to take your sustainability career, or simply have a work question you want to unpack with someone, you do not need to wait until everything is perfectly prepared. Browse the directory and book a Coffee Chat.

This Week’s FAQ: Can Further Study and Certifications Really Help a Sustainability Career?

This week, members discussed two practical questions: Does a sustainability-related master’s degree abroad help with job hunting? Are sustainability courses and certifications worth the investment?

Most members’ answer was: yes, they can help—but neither is a shortcut to a guaranteed offer.

Study abroad can bring language skills, an international perspective, and observations from different contexts. But when it comes to job hunting, visas, competition, work experience, and the direction you actually want to pursue still matter. Courses and certifications can be useful for getting started, building foundational knowledge, or making your profile a little easier to recognise. Once you are in the work, though, communicating across teams, understanding the situation on the ground, and moving work forward still come through repeated practice.

Rather than rushing to ask “Should I study?” or “Should I get certified?”, it may be more useful to ask: What problem do I want this to solve for me? Degrees, courses, and certifications can be starting points, but a career does not grow on its own once you have collected them. Detailed responses are available in the community notebook.

What Have We Actually Made Possible After One Month?

As the challenge approaches one month, we are looking back at more than points.

Members have met people they would not otherwise have encountered through teams, scheduled Coffee Chats to ask questions they had not known who to ask, responded to one another’s concerns in the community, and taken online meetups offline over dinner. These things have gradually been happening over the month. The Week 5 cross-team online meetup also started to bring together conversations that had been scattered across different teams.

We will not rush to claim that these things have already created some enormous change. But genuine connections are forming: one more peer to know, one more chance to say a work concern out loud. That matters to us.

Some Participation Does Not Show Up in the Points

We have also noticed that some members participate seriously in tasks and conversations without always reporting points.

Honestly, that still makes us very happy. More than whether every action is recorded, we care about whether people are genuinely engaging: whether someone meets a new person through an event or finds direction for a question that has bothered them for a long time. If those real exchanges happen, that is already meaningful to us.

Of course, if you return to the challenge page to report after attending an event or completing a task, we will be even happier. It helps us see everyone’s involvement and leaves a record of your actions on this shared journey 🥰

Results of the Raymond 30 AI Course Applications

Thank you to everyone who applied for the Raymond 30 AI course and shared their learning situations and questions. This time, two members were selected to receive course places.

If you were not selected this time, please do not be discouraged. Every application was thoughtful. From the responses, we found that many members already have solid AI skills. The questions you are facing may not be solved simply by taking one more AI course; the answers may need to emerge gradually from your own work context, career choices, and practical application.

If we hold future online AI-sharing sessions, members who submitted an application this time will receive priority invitations. Thank you again for applying and for telling us about your real needs.

See You at the In-Person Closing Ceremony

The challenge is still under way, and we are already looking forward to meeting everyone in person at the end.

We will invite members who participated actively to an in-person closing ceremony. We hope it will be a lively chance for people who first met online to finally meet face to face, and to hear the many stories people have to share. We will do our best to make it happen.

That is all for the Week 5 recap. See you next week—and if there is something you want to talk about, go invite someone for a chat 🥰