Municipalities: Driving the Transition

Big changes start small

What does a good future look like? Local people can answer this question. And they can collaboratively kickstart and shape their future.

joinTransition supports municipalities and rural regions on this journey. With local change-makers, we develop goals, prioritize, and get started. With a strong network of innovators and supporters, we connect topics and stakeholders – from the local community to the EU.

• What kind of energy supply makes us independent? • What kind of mobility reliably gets us to our destination?

• How do we live affordably and without being lonely? • How do our farmers strengthen the environment and health?

• How are meaningful and future-proof jobs created locally? • How do we keep health and education vibrant?

Local, Together, Future-proof

Shaping change together

Overload

Municipalities are facing significant changes, from mobility to housing, energy supply to childcare. However, local administrations quickly encounter limitations – financial, personnel, and structural.

Person trägt einen übervollen Stapel Aktenordner.

Resources

The answer also lies locally. Every municipality has organizations and individuals who can contribute experience, resources, and energy. What is often missing is a space where these forces can connect and combine.

Space

joinTransition creates a space where we support people and places on their transition path. Together, we develop goals, prioritize, and implement them.

Change

Together, change happens locally. Complex issues become tangible on the ground. New ideas gain acceptance because people are closely involved, contribute, and benefit. Cohesion grows as change is achieved together. In our projects, we see what successes are possible when we move forward courageously and focused together, and the joy and motivation each step forward brings.

Change needs people to get involved.

making a difference together

Current Projects

Europe

Interconnected Regenerative Inclusive Societies (IRIS)

Change-makers from Italy, Spain, and Germany network, learn from each other, and strengthen community transition across Europe.

Innovation

Komm:Transform

Where CleanTech startups and municipalities come together, tailored solutions for the local energy transition are created.

Learning Lab

MiT Municipalities and Rural Areas

From mid-2026, we will expand our approach and demonstrate how change can succeed wherever people tackle it together.

Learning Lab

MiT Tutzing

Since 2024, 20 co-creators have been exploring how local transition emerges and grows bottom-up.

Financing

Munich Financing Facility

We are developing new approaches with the City of Munich to make climate investments viable even in areas where traditional financing reaches its limits.

Network

Tutzing Transition Days

50 thought leaders and practitioners will convene to collectively advance municipal transition.

Luftaufnahme der Akademie für Politische Bildung, im Hintergrund der Starnberger See und Alpenpanorama

team

Who is joinTransition?

Christina Tewes-Gradl

Founder and Managing Director, she studied languages, economics, and cultural studies in Passau and Buenos Aires, political philosophy at the London School of Economics, and earned her doctorate as an economic philosopher at the University of Halle.

After three years at McKinsey, the Kofi Annan Fellow founded her own company in Berlin in 2007, endeva, which, with its international associates, develops business models in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, often on behalf of the UN, EU, and European governments.

Since 2017, Endeva has also been leading system innovation processes in Europe and Germany.

Nick Tewes

Founder and Managing Director, he started as a newspaper and television journalist during his political science studies in Bonn and Munich.

He gained experience in communication at BMW AG and Philip Morris before building up and leading Public Communication and then Corporate Affairs at Allianz SE.

From 2017, he advised companies, foundations, GOs, and NGOs with the spaceship-institute. Since 2024, he has been focusing on the transition within and through municipalities.