[EurOMA Annual Conference 2025] Game Changers: Community-Based Experiential Learning for Sustainable Futures

This paper presents the Game Changers initiative, a community-based experiential learning project. The initiative focuses on upcycling surplus football shirts into functional bags, embedding circular economy principles through hands-on sustainability education. Drawing on Communities of Practice (CoP) theory, the initiative fosters collaborative learning and identity transformation, while addressing systemic barriers to sustainable behaviour in the fashion industry. Findings demonstrate the initiative’s scalability across international educational contexts, showcasing its potential to advance responsible consumption. The study extends CoP and circular economy literature into educational and community domains while offering a replicable model for integrating sustainability into curriculum design and community engagement.