Global Youth Innovation Challenge 2026 ($1,000 prize) – YOA

Deadline: May 31, 2026

Applications are invited for the Global Youth Innovation Challenge 2026. Since 2021, the OCA has partnered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) and the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) by means of the Global Environmental Education Partnership (GEEP) to empower younger leaders aged 15 to 30 to suggest revolutionary options for the world’s most urgent marine points.

Now in its sixth 12 months, the 2026 Challenge emphasizes a holistic strategy to ocean conservation. This 12 months’s initiative encourages individuals to begin with particular person motion and scale their influence to households, communities, and the worldwide stage. The OCA envisions a platform the place youth can rework artistic ideas into tangible actions, elevating international consciousness and provoking a collective motion to safeguard our marine ecosystems.

This 12 months’s problem focuses on:

• Reducing private waste and marine particles,
• Promoting optimistic group and societal impacts, and
• Advocating worldwide marine environmental schooling.

Benefits

• Three excellent winners might be chosen, every receiving a $1,000 USD prize and an invite to Taiwan to attend the award ceremony and current their concepts at a global discussion board.

Eligibility

The Youth Innovation Challenge is meant for younger leaders and innovators aged 15–30. Your revolutionary options should present an answer to one of many following key areas, utilizing environmental schooling as a key element:

• Taking private motion to scale back waste and marine particles, equivalent to decreasing and/or mitigating the results of marine particles and different waste, together with the monitoring, clear-up, and recycling of marine particles.
• Developing marine particles methods that handle group and societal influence, together with educating communities about how they’ll handle these points.
• Advancing international marine safety by means of collaboration, partnerships, and coverage.

Application

Proposals will solely be accepted in English presently. Your video pitch and written responses is not going to be scored primarily based in your English proficiency, however reasonably the energy of your answer and your skill to speak your concepts and imaginative and prescient to the judges.

Click here to apply

For extra data, go to YIC.