Living Danube Challenge winning projects selected!

This year, DANUBE4all partnered with New European Bauhaus to create the Living Danube Challenge. This community-led NEB Lab project is a think-and-do tank, supporting and enabling the green transition in the Danube region. The Living Danube Challenge programme offered online training, creative idea development and networking to young social entrepreuneurs and activists in the environmental space, culminating in a 2 day 'launchpad' event at Vienna’s BOKU River Lab on October 10-11, 2025. where three winning ideas were selected for seed funding €10,000 to get their projects off the ground!

The three online trainings were held on September 24, October 1, and October 8 prior to the 2-day in-person event at the BOKU River Lab. Participants received hands-on training in nature-based solutions, environmental stewardship, citizen science, and social business strategy, featuring case studies from the Danube River Basin. During the third webinar, Martin Yankov from the Collective Foundation Gabravo, a successful initiative supported by EIT, joined as a guest speaker, sharing insights from his work on community-driven innovation. 

The Vienna event featured a keynote from Patagonia representative, Yannick Meijers and participants were also treated to creative inspiration through films by three filmmakers, a mermaid comedy performance by Denise Ackerl, and a work-in-progress dance performance choreographed by Raphael Miro Holzer. 

Working in teams of up to five, participants tackled one of five local river ecosystems challenges identified by the Healthy Danube Network. Guided by expert mentors, teams moved through rounds of ideation and iteration and pitched their final solutions to a jury of industry and institutional specialists.

2 day Launchpad event at BOKU River Lab, Vienna. Photos courtesy Pulsaqua.

The winning projects are....

post_flood_community “Precipitate! 

post_flood_community “Precipitate!” reimagines flood sediment as a material for artistic, site-specific installations that help communities understand and care for their river environments. Through artistic and collaborative strategies, the post_flood_community cultivates first-hand ecological awareness, inclusion and respect for hybrid urban-river biotopes. The project also revalues urban sediment as a regenerative material, opening dialogue for redesigning protocols of urban-riparian management, resiliently, regeneratively, and in creative ways.  

RiverQuest  

RiverQuest is a gamified approach designed to engage people in outdoor exploration while providing an enjoyable and accessible entry point into citizen science. It introduces a mobile game that blends digital interaction with real-world activities. In the game, users are tasked with caring for their own virtual river, which grows and evolves as they complete various quests. These quests span multiple categories, including citizen science activities. As users engage with the game, RiverQuest collects data that is stored and can be shared with interested third parties.  

AquaMind 

Our aim is to educate citizens on water-related issues and empower them to protect their environment and interests. We plan to achieve this through an “Engage, Entertain, Educate” approach and a pilot project on a Danube beach in a small town. There, a small natural waterflow, resembling a hydraulic lab model but freely accessible, already engages children as they shape its morphology through play. We want to build on this natural curiosity by adding tools and suggestions to enhance learning. Further upstream, we will install interactive elements explaining key topics like bank filtration wells that supply drinking water to Budapest and nearby settlements. 

Additionally, we plan a citizen science element for parents: simple tools and guidance to measure flowrate, generating valuable hydrological data on small waterflows currently unmonitored by authorities. This will test public involvement and data quality for future expansion. 

Best of luck to these fantastic initiatives!