Deadline: 19-Jul-23
Do you have an innovative idea about how to protect marine life? Or tackle marine debris? Or help coastal communities adapt to the effects of climate change? GEEP is excited to announce its 2023 Youth Innovation Challenge: Saving Our Seas!
In partnership with the Taiwan Ocean Conservation Administration (OCA), this year’s challenge provides an opportunity for young people ages 15–30 around the world to share their innovative solutions to protect marine resources and support people of all ages to be engaged stewards for marine conservation. They’re looking for solutions that are innovative, feasible, and informed by research.
The Youth Innovation Challenge addresses marine issues, including conservation, biodiversity, and marine debris. Solutions can incorporate a variety of approaches but must include environmental education. Solutions must be innovative, feasible, and informed by research. Proposed solutions should use environmental education (EE) as a key strategy. EE provides the skills, values, attitudes, and behaviors that encourage individuals and groups to be thoughtful and engaged changemakers. As a key part of your solution, EE can help ensure that solutions are focused on empowering long-term change within a community.
Key Areas
Aligns with at least one key focus area: Your proposed solution falls within the scope of at least one of the key areas:
- Marine biodiversity and conservation: Managing, protecting, and/or restoring marine biodiversity for its ecological, cultural, economic, or other values. This can include using education as a key tool in establishing and/or managing marine protected areas (MPA) under the global 30 X 30 initiative (to protect 30% of Earth’s surface by 2030).
- Marine debris: Reducing and/or mitigating the effects of marine debris, including the monitoring, clean-up, and recycling of marine debris, and educating communities about how to address these issues.
Benefits
- All eligible proposals will be evaluated by a panel of experts working at the intersection of environmental education, community engagement, and marine conservation. A total of 15 YIC finalists will be selected and will receive the following benefits:
- An official YIC finalist certificate
- Recognition through GEEP, NAAEE, and other global partners’ websites and social media pages
- An invitation to a virtual dialogue with other YIC awardees in late 2023. This interactive dialogue will give awardees an opportunity to share ideas, learn from new perspectives, and expand their networks.
- They will select 3 winners from the 15 YIC finalists. Each winner will receive a $1,000 USD prize.
Eligibility Criteria
- The Youth Innovation Challenge is a global competition, so anyone aged 15 to 30 from anywhere in the world can apply. Teams can apply for the challenge.
- They don’t limit the number of collaborators you work with.
- Solutions must be submitted online through Submittable (only one proposal per person or team will be accepted).
- Your innovative solutions must provide a solution to one of the key areas, using environmental education as a key component.
- Proposals will only be accepted in English at this time. Your pitch and written responses will not be scored based on your English proficiency, but rather the strength of your solution and your ability to communicate your ideas and vision to the judges.
- Includes environmental education (EE) as one of the key components of your solution:
- Solutions proposed in any of the above key areas should demonstrate how environmental education can help address complex environmental issues and create long-lasting change for a sustainable future.
- In reviewing the education component, the selection panel will look for the following characteristics of effective EE practice in your proposed solution:
- Building capacity for informed choices—EE aims to provide people and communities with the knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills to help them make informed decisions about addressing environmental and social issues.
- Community-centered—Integrating environmental goals within the context of community interests, issues, and capacities puts the community at the heart of EE. A community is a group of people with something in common, and communities can be at any geographic scale or in a virtual space. Your solution is based on your target community’s unique needs, and your approach is tailored to their interests and capacities.
- Collaborative and inclusive—EE supports collaborative and inclusive relationships, partnerships, and coalitions. You demonstrate how partnerships will contribute to your solution’s success, and how you ensure your solution is equitable, inclusive, and accessible to community members from a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives.
- Focused on action—A central aim of EE is informed, committed action by individuals, groups, or communities that improves the quality of the environment. While strategies like advocacy and social marketing are valuable, they on their own are not considered to be EE because they attempt to move participants to take a specific, predetermined action.
For more information, visit Global Environmental Education Partnership.