This article presents a bottom-up approach which attempts to link the Water Footprint (WF) concept with climate change adaptation and capacity development. The approach was developed and tested in cooperation with a partner school in Austria aiming to provide a starting point for WF assessment and formulate an improvement response. The pupils reduced their WF by 9%, and became change agents. The approach assists young people to develop self-efficacy by discovering the connection between their individual actions at local level and aspects of climate change adaptation at global level. It provides a tool to increase this understanding and contribute to the adaptation of distant impacts of climate change and reduce vulnerability.