Florian Guillaume

Founder on CHNGMKR

Florian Guillaume, founder of CHNGMKR, recommends 99 changemakers, each one chosen and explained by name.

Changemakers recommended by Florian Guillaume

• Mellon Foundation, New York, USA
  They put the arts and the humanities first in what they fund. It takes some nerve, and I respect it.
• Plastic Odyssey, Marseille, France
  Simon's ship goes from port to port and shows coastal towns how to turn their plastic into something they can use locally.
• Notpla, London, UK
  Seaweed packaging you can eat or compost. It looks like common sense, and we had forgotten it.
• Cecosesola, Barquisimeto, Venezuela
  A hundred thousand families have run their own markets and clinics by assembly since 1967. I feel small next to that.
• Transition Network, Totnes, UK
  Rob taught me that imagining the future is a tool in itself, and the climate transition needs it.
• Biofabricate, New York, USA
  Suzanne Lee built the community that takes grown materials out of the lab and into actual products.
• Proxima Fusion, Munich, Allemagne
  A European path to fusion that runs continuously. It is a bet, and I am watching it closely.
• Low-Tech Lab, Concarneau, France
  Every solution they test is published open source. The knowledge belongs to everyone, and that is what stays with me.
• Billion Oyster Project, New York, USA
  Ecological restoration at the scale of a city, with schools at the heart of it. Few projects reconcile a city with its ocean like this one.
• Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, N'Djamena, Chad
  Hindou brings her community's knowledge of the land to the world stage. We need that voice.
• Samsø Energy Academy, Samsø, Denmark
  An island where the people own the wind together. I know no clearer proof that energy can be democratic.
• La Chartreuse, Aiguenoire, France
  They chose to make less so as to stay what they are. That takes courage, and I admire it.
• Biltoki, Anglet, France
  They bring a covered market back to life by trusting the small producers who already feed the town.
• Simonetta Cheli, Frascati, Italy
  She turns satellite data into tools for climate decisions. That is Europe taking its responsibility seriously.
• World Access for the Blind, Los Angeles, USA
  Daniel taught himself to see with sound, and now he teaches thousands. It changes what we think a person can learn.
• Wildlife Conservation Fund / Hélène Grimaud, New York, USA
  A great pianist who gives her fame to wolves. Art and wildness together, and it moves me.
• Kéré Architecture, Berlin, Germany
  Francis Kéré builds with local hands and local materials, and the community owns what gets built.
• Skate Anima, Curitiba, Brazil
  Kids with cerebral palsy get the real thrill of a skateboard. Joy, organised.
• Refettorio Paris, Paris, France
  Bottura turns surplus food into beautiful meals, served with dignity. The beauty is part of it.
• Why Kamikatsu, Kamikatsu, Japan
  A town that sorts its waste into 45 streams. The hard part was the culture, and they did it.
• Sailcoop, Vannes, France
  They make crossing the Atlantic by sail a real option again. I like that.
• Alenvi, Paris, France
  Small teams of caregivers who own their work. It gives dignity to everyone in the room.
• Gesda Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland
  They look ahead to where science and diplomacy will collide. Patient work, and necessary.
• Lucas Davaze, Médiation Climat, GRENOBLE, France
  He takes people to stand on a dying glacier. Climate stops being an idea and becomes a memory they keep.
• Ford Foundation, New York, USA
  They aimed their giving straight at inequality and pulled their money out of fossil fuels. That is leadership, and it should be named.
• Phytobokaz, Petit-Bourg, Guadeloupe, France
  Dr Joseph puts Caribbean plant knowledge on the scientific footing it always deserved.
• CERN, Genève, Suisse
  Seventeen thousand scientists from a hundred countries work there as one. This is where the Higgs was found and the web was invented.
• 350.org, Washington DC, USA
  They anchored a global movement to a single number. The climate fight got a clear line to hold.
• Equal Justice Initiative, Montgomery, USA
  Bryan Stevenson says change starts when you get close to injustice. I believe him.
• Maram Kaïré, Dakar, Senegal
  He opens the sky to young Africans. Space science belongs to the whole continent, and he shows it.
• MIT Media Lab, Boston, MA, USA
  Their belief that the best ideas live between disciplines. I come back to it often.
• Copenhill, Copenhagen, Denmark
  A power plant you can ski down. Bold, and I respect that they also show its contradictions honestly.
• La Preuve par 7, Paris, France
  They prove an idea by doing it, with the people who live there. That is urbanism I trust.
• Fairphone, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  Bas showed that a phone can be built for repair and with fair sourcing. The whole industry feels the pressure.
• Sweet Om, Lamentin (Guadeloupe), France
  Therese grows wellbeing out of a Creole garden. The care in it is real.
• Senseable City Lab (MIT), Cambridge, USA
  Carlo Ratti reads the city as a living organism. His work helps us see ourselves inside it.
• makesense, Paris, France
  They put collective intelligence to work for changemakers, two hours at a time.
• The Emergence Network, Chennai, India
  Bayo gives me permission to slow down and sit with a question, rather than rush to fix it.
• Diazoma, Athens, Greece
  They bring ancient theatres back to life for the towns around them. Heritage that still breathes.
• Birdgirl (Mya-Rose Craig), Bristol, UK
  Mya-Rose opens birdwatching and nature to communities that were too often kept outside.
• Nicolas Nova, Genève, Suisse
  Nicolas taught designers to think like anthropologists. Their work matters more for it.
• Écomaris, Montréal, Canada
  They make plankton visible. Half our oxygen comes from it and we never see it, so this helps us care.
• Eurasanté, Lille, France
  A health-innovation cluster gave a whole region a future after heavy industry.
• Rotor Deconstruction, Bruxelles, Belgium
  They prove that salvaging a building's materials can pay for itself. That is what convinces builders.
• Institut Océanographique Paul Ricard, île des Embiez, France
  Fifty years of independent science on the Mediterranean, open to the public for free. A gift.
• Ellen MacArthur Foundation, London, UK
  Ellen gave the circular economy its language. That language went on to shape real policy.
• Floating Farm, Rotterdam, Netherlands
  A dairy farm floating in Rotterdam's port. A playful answer to cities running out of room.
• Café Joyeux, Paris, France
  A café run by people with disabilities, with real hospitality. Inclusion becomes ordinary, and warm.
• Heatherwick Studio, London, UK
  Thomas argues that buildings should move us. His work makes the argument for him.
• Wael Shawky, Alexandria, Egypt
  Shawky makes history feel unstable, in a good way. His puppets and staged operas show that every official account was built by someone, and that taking the telling back is a form of resistance.
• Navdanya, Dehradun, India
  Vandana Shiva defends seeds as a commons. That fight protects farmers everywhere.
• Les Beaux Mets, Marseille, France
  A Marseille kitchen where excellence and second chances grow together. And the food is good.
• Libera Terra, Corleone, Italy
  Land taken from the mafia, turned into honest farming work. Justice you can taste.
• Yellow Dot Studios, Los Angeles, USA
  They use sharp humour to call out greenwashing. It keeps people awake, and I enjoy it.
• Taisugar Circular Village, Taisugar, Taiwan
  A village designed so that materials keep circulating. A calm, livable picture of the circular economy.
• Mondragon Corporation, Mondragon, Spain
  Eighty thousand worker-owners have governed their own companies since 1956. I know no more serious alternative to shareholder capitalism.
• Final Spark, Lausanne, Suisse
  Computing on living neurons sounds impossible. They let scientists try it, from anywhere.
• Michel Mayor, Genève, Suisse
  He turned the question of whether we are alone into something we can measure.
• Nyaguthii Chege, Nairobi, Kenya
  Carrying Wangari Maathai's vision forward is no small task. Under Chege, a founding African environmental movement stays rooted in the women and communities who do the planting.
• Wanjira Mathai, Nairobi, Kenya
  She carries the Green Belt Movement forward while shaping climate policy for the continent. With her, the link between restored land and restored dignity becomes obvious.
• Hasdeo, Raipur, India
  Alok stands between the forest and the mine, and he does it by giving a louder voice to the people who live there.
• Oceans 2050, USA
  Alexandra is building the data that lets ocean farmers prove how much carbon they store, and earn from it.
• We Are Sista, Paris, France
  Tatiana and her collective turned the gender funding gap into a movement, then built the fund to close it.
• SOLshare, Dhaka, Bangladesh
  Neighbours share their solar power, and clean energy reaches the poorest. That was the point all along.
• Under The Pole, Concarneau, France
  They dive where science cannot easily reach, and they share everything they find.
• Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Svalbard, Norway
  A cold mountain holding more than a million seeds. The most patient insurance humanity has.
• Visionary Co., Nagoya, Japan
  They turn a demographic constraint into an opportunity. Physical strength as a vocation, with the stigma taken off it.
• Atelier Berger Milà, Paris, France
  A young Franco-Spanish duo who treat architecture as the tissue between people and their territory. A quiet, exacting practice, from a single room to the fabric of a city.
• Studio Roosegaarde, Rotterdam, Netherlands
  Daan turns technology into a conversation about the world we want.
• Plateau Urbain, Paris, France
  They keep empty buildings alive between two projects, and make room for people who could never afford the rent.
• Shorefast Foundation / Fogo Island Inn, Fogo island, Canada
  Zita Cobb came home. She turned hospitality into a way of keeping her island alive.
• Studio Other Spaces, Berlin, Germany
  Eliasson and Behmann make spaces that ask you to feel where you stand in nature.
• Instituto Terra, Aimorés, Brasil
  The Salgados replanted a dead farm as forest. The springs came back, then the animals. It gives me hope.
• Cesar Jung-Harada / Protei, Hong Kong, China
  Cesar treats open-source hardware as a public good. That generosity is rare among inventors.
• Carboculture, Helsinki, Finland
  Farm waste turned into stable carbon. A modest, useful answer to a loud problem.
• Fonds Explore, Concarneau, France
  They fund the expeditions that help us understand a world we are still learning to protect.
• rrreefs, Zurich, Suisse
  They print reef bricks shaped like real coral, and the larvae move in. Direct, and rather beautiful.
• Bôndy, Antananarivo, Madagascar
  They reconnect Madagascar's communities with the forest they depend on. Regeneration done with people.
• The Child Movement, Greater Noida, India
  Licypriya started at eight. She carries the voice of her generation, and with force.
• Refugee Food Festival, Paris, France
  Refugee chefs in great kitchens. They arrive as talent, with stories you can taste.
• Novo Nordisk Foundation, Copenhagen, Denmark
  The scale of their giving is enormous. I respect that so much of it goes to the health of ordinary people.
• Café Marulanda, Yotoco, Colombia
  A former guerrilla who grows peace through coffee. A second life, and one to celebrate.
• Fratries, Nantes, France
  Sharing an ordinary city flat turns out to be the most dignified support you can offer.
• Valldaura Self-Sufficient Labs, Barcelona, Spain
  A forest that is the resource, the classroom and the curriculum at once. My idea of a good lab.
• Ibn Al Baytar / Zoubida Charrouf, Rabat, Maroc
  Zoubida gave argan its science, and made sure the women who harvest it earn from it.
• Knepp Wildland / Isabella Tree, Dorset, UK
  They let a worn-out farm go wild, and the turtle doves and nightingales came back. That story changed how I think about land.
• Paul Emilieu Studio, Paris, France
  He starts every project from what already exists. Craft and conscience, working together.
• Schumacher College, Dartington, UK
  A school that lives what it teaches, grows its own food and decides together. That is education I believe in.
• Abderazzak Benchaabane, Marrakech, Maroc
  Forty years documenting Morocco's plants. He saved knowledge that was about to disappear.
• Elman Peace and Human Rights Centre, Mogadishu, Somalia
  Ilwad chose to go back to Mogadishu to do this work. That choice tells you everything.
• Ocean Alive, Setúbal, Portugal
  Raquel hands the protection of the seagrass to the fisherwomen who know the estuary best.
• Ama, Japanese Freediving Women, Mie Prefecture, Japan
  Two thousand years of diving in rhythm with the sea, taking only enough to come back. They still teach us how to live with the ocean.
• Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, Bra, Italy
  Carlo Petrini reminded us that eating well is a pleasure, and one to defend everywhere.
• isiMpondo, Xolobeni, South Africa
  Their stand for ancestral land says it plainly: protecting a place and honouring the people on it are the same thing.
• Rainforest Connection, San Francisco, USA
  Old phones turned into ears for the forest. Frugal and clever, the way I like it.
• Village Alzheimer, Dax, France
  People with Alzheimer's keep an ordinary life, with a real shop and a bistro. Deeply humane.
• Shinichiro Ogata, Tokyo, Japan
  Ogata carries Japanese tradition into the present, with a care you can see in everything he makes.
• My Human Kit, Nantes, France
  Nicolas lost his hand and turned that into an open lab, where people design their own solutions.
• Cloudfisher, Agadir, Morocco
  Drinking water harvested straight from fog. A simple idea that changes lives in dry places.

A correspondent on CHNGMKR, a cartography of people reshaping how change happens, recommended by changemakers. Browse the full cartography or see the full directory.