Encouraging and recognizing youth environmental action

While our planet continues to face pressing environmental issues such as climate change, plastic pollution, and biodiversity loss, youth are increasingly taking action in their lives and within their communities to make a positive impact. The Student Innovation Challenge is an opportunity to encourage youth to undertake environmental and education projects and to celebrate their efforts and achievements. 

Take a Stand: Youth for Conservation and Raincoast’s Salish Sea Emerging Stewards education program share the goal of inspiring youth to become environmental stewards and take an active part in creating positive change, and we are excited to launch another edition of the Challenge and see the incredible work youth undertake in their schools and communities. Focusing on the themes of local wildlife and habitats, Indigenous cultures and history, climate change, or human connections and impacts, the goal of the SIC is to motivate and inspire youth to make a positive impact in their community, celebrate the creativity, ingenuity and initiative of youth, and to energize them to continue taking action.

Past entries

Previous participants have undertaken environmental community projects, such as building nesting boxes for at-risk northern saw-whet owls, and creating community and pollinator gardens. Some projects have had public education goals, such as the 2022 Grand Prize Winner Lola, who built a website highlighting the lack of access to drinking water in some Indigenous reserves. Many others used art and creativity, such as an educational stop-motion video on ocean plastic pollution. The 2021 Grand Prize Winners produced a short documentary film bringing awareness about human impacts on sensitive marine ecosystems of the Salish Sea. Past projects have come in the shape of class efforts, individual projects as part of school-wide fairs, and entirely solo endeavours. No effort is too big or small to make an impact and enter into the Challenge.

The 2025 Challenge

In 2025, we are encouraging youth to take action and participate in the Student Innovation Challenge. Projects will be entered in one of three categories for judging: Grades 5-7, Grades 8-12, and Young Adults age 19-25. Entries will be evaluated by a panel of judges from Raincoast and Take a Stand based on originality and creativity, potential impact towards conservation or awareness, feasibility to put their strategies into action, and overall impression. Prizes will be awarded for the top of each age category, as well as for the Grand Prize winner, along with many special mention prizes.

To enter, read the official contest rules document, download and fill the Student Innovation Challenge entry form, and submit your project and form to Kermode [at] sfu [dot] ca. You can find more information about the Challenge here. 

You can help

Raincoast’s in-house scientists, collaborating graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and professors make us unique among conservation groups. We work with First Nations, academic institutions, government, and other NGOs to build support and inform decisions that protect aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and the wildlife that depend on them. We conduct ethically applied, process-oriented, and hypothesis-driven research that has immediate and relevant utility for conservation deliberations and the collective body of scientific knowledge.

We investigate to understand coastal species and processes. We inform by bringing science to decision-makers and communities. We inspire action to protect wildlife and wildlife habitats.