Peace Boat wins the Educators’ Challenge Awards
Peace Boat’s Ocean and Climate Youth Ambassadors Programme is one of the winners of the first edition of the Educators’ Challenge Awards. The award, given by the Global Challenges Foundation, recognizes innovative methods of engaging young people and the general public around global risks such as climate change, nuclear weapons, and pandemics. It was announced in a ceremony at the London School of Economics in London on May 15.
The jury said they appreciated the international scope and the different age groups at which the programme is aimed. Peace Boat invites young people from small island states on the front line of the climate crisis to travel onboard Peace Boat’s ship to engage with civil society and government representatives and educate them about the impact on their island communities. The programme provides capacity training and education for the young leaders onboard including media training, international systems, and solutions to the crisis to better equip them as activists on climate change and ocean degradation. Guest educators involved in the programme have included Christiana Figueres of Mission 2020 and Adriana Valenzuela of UN Climate Change.
The evaluation process of the entries was carried out in the autumn of 2018. Educators of all types (teachers in schools and universities, journalists, content creators, game developers, and curators) were invited to submit their ideas to the jury. Thirteen semi-final jury members from BBC Earth, Games for Change, Ashoka and EsGlobal, among others, evaluated the initial entries and twelve finalists were selected. All the finalists took part in a public event at the London School of Economics. Peace Boat’s International Coordinator, Chema Sarri, introduced the Ocean and Climate Youth Ambassadors Programme in front of the audience and answered the final questions from the jury.
During the event, the jury announced the winners which included such projects as an interactive card game for high school and college students that simulates economic damages and polluting behavior to a comic book about the current risks and possible futures of countries globally. You can read about all the projects here.
Peace Boat’s Ocean and Climate Youth Ambassadors Programme was held for the first time in 2017 when Peace Boat invited youth from Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Seychelles, Maldives, Belize and Trinidad and Tobago. The second edition was held in 2018 with participants from Fiji, Palau, Timor-Leste, Seychelles, Singapore, and Barbados. On May 24th, 2018, the third edition will begin in Malta with another group of youth activists from Fiji, Palau, Tuvalu, Seychelles, Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago, Montserrat and Saint Lucia travelling through Europe and to the United Nations in New York. The award has a prize of 5000 USD that will be used for further editions of the programme to continue to educate and raise awareness about the climate crisis and provide capacity training for young leaders.