Youth Innovation Challenge: Advancing Marine Conservation 2024

The 2024 Youth Innovation Challenge (YIC) provides an opportunity for young people around the world to share their innovative solutions to protect marine resources—from the oceans and coasts to the rivers and lakes. This year’s YIC explores how they can address marine issues, including loss of biodiversity, marine debris, lack of awareness, and other related issues, and support people of all ages to be engaged stewards to support marine environments.

The Youth Innovation Challenge (YIC) is a program of the Global Environmental Education Partnership (GEEP), a vibrant and inclusive learning network designed to champion environmental education (EE) around the world, in partnership with the Taiwan Ocean Conservation Administration (OCA). GEEP is a partnership between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Taiwan Ministry of Environment, and the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), which serves as the secretariat.

Priority Areas

• Marine biodiversity and conservation: Managing, protecting, and/or restoring marine biodiversity for its ecological, cultural, economic, and other values.
• 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.
• Public-private collaboration: Collaborating between the private sector, governments, and the public to protect marine environments. This might include ideas for cooperation between government and corporations to fulfill corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals, civic engagement opportunities for the public to engage with government programs, and other initiatives that foster collaboration between public and private sectors.

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
  • They  will select 3 winners from the 15 YIC finalists. Each winner will receive a $1,000 USD prize, in addition to all the benefits listed above, and will be invited to attend the YIC award ceremony at the Taiwan Ocean Conservation Administration’s marine debris conference in Taiwan in September 2024 (all travel expenses covered).

Eligibility Criteria

• The Youth Innovation Challenge is intended for young leaders and innovators aged 15–30.

For more information, visit GEEP.