-
Sea Youth Rise Up 2019
The oceans are rising and so are youth! Around the country and around the world, young people are coming together and speaking out to protect and restore our ocean…
Continue reading -
Youth Engagement and Leadership Opportunities for 2019
Over the past year, The Ocean Project has been significantly expanding our youth initiative to demonstrate worldwide youth leadership for ocean conservation with a special focus on World Oceans…
Continue reading -
Collaborating for Conservation in 2019
Happy Holidays and thank you for all you do to create a healthier blue planet! It has been a year of significant progress and exciting opportunities to collaborate with partner…
Continue reading -
Sea Youth Rise Up 2018
At a time where the world is faced with herculean challenges, it is imperative that we engage the passion, idealism, and energy found within the youth of today. Among…
Continue reading -
Youth for the Ocean Launches!
This month we officially launch the Youth for the Ocean initiative to collaboratively accelerate youth engagement and develop youth leaders for a healthy ocean. We’re excited to partner with you! Our youth initiative will…
Continue reading -
Meet Our New Director of Youth Initiatives, Rachael Coccia!
The Ocean Project to happy to announce the hiring of our newest team member, Rachael Coccia. As the Director of Youth Initiatives, Rachael will coordinate the
Continue reading -
Uniting to Build Ocean Literacy with Children
As part of our growing youth initiative – helping to engage, educate, and activate young people around the world – we’re excited to announce the launch of a free…
Continue reading -
Collaborating for Conservation in 2018
Happy holiday season! Thank you to all the organizations from around the world that are involved in our partner network and working to advance conservation….
Continue reading -
Youth Taking the Lead for Conservation Action
Teens with Bags: The ZooALIVE teen volunteers from the Saint Louis Zoo pose with their #byetobags reusable bags! They are ready to go and spread the reusable bag message! In the summer of 2016, Phillipe Cousteau, grandson of legendary explorer Jacques Cousteau, recognized youth as “the hope for our oceans.” Across the globe, there is an ever-growing group of young and passionate leaders with confident “can-do” attitudes ready to make positive changes for our planet. Today more than ever, these youth are involved in major conservation action projects. Countless organizations have dynamic youth groups helping them carry out their conservation missions. The Ocean Project placed special emphasis on youth engagement in 2016, with plans for expansion in 2017 and beyond. Despite these advancements, there is an untapped potential to allow youth to not only be involved in, but also build and lead conservation action projects. Providing youth with the right amount of guidance, while allowing them to create and accomplish meaningful actions for our oceans can reap invaluable benefits. During the course of the Innovative Solutions Grants program, our partners provided youth with some powerful opportunities. Program grantees uncovered new and innovative approaches towards youth engagement in the process. At the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Debbie Colodner strongly encouraged others to, “engage the power of young professionals or university students to help make the case,” which, in their case, was that, “millennial customers care about where their (seafood) comes from”. Kirinne at St. Louis Zoo noted that, “one of the most exciting and successful parts of our campaigns was allowing the teens to experiment with the delivery of the #byetobags,” as their youth group learned a lot about not only engaging visitors on-site, but also through social media. The team led by the Woodland Park Zoo, summed it all up when writing, “empowering youth leaders to develop public, and especially peer-to-peer, conservation engagement efforts is highly recommended and can lead to exciting new engagement strategies!” They also added, “when teen leaders are developing public engagement efforts, their enthusiasm and ideas need focus to ensure successful implementation.” Rather than looking only at the opportunity to reach youth with information, many of the program grantees went “above and beyond” to explore how they might empower youth to improve and amplify a conservation message. The combined experience of grantees at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, New England Aquarium, Riverbanks Zoo, Saint Louis Zoo, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and Woodland Park Zoo all point towards an opportunity to increase youth leadership development all while advancing their conservation missions. In 2017, let’s strive to provide youth with more leadership opportunities and turn their positive “can-do” attitudes into meaningful action for our oceans. Stay tuned for more from the World Oceans Day Youth Advisory Council and from The Ocean Project on exciting new youth engagement and youth leadership development opportunities!
Continue reading -
Youth Making Waves for Ocean Conservation
2016 brought a variety of challenges and triumphs for our oceans. While the world faced the hottest year on record and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef suffered from its largest coral bleaching event, we were still able to celebrate the establishment of the largest marine protected areas on earth in Hawaii and Antarctica, and cities and countries around the world put disposable plastic bag bans in place. As 2017 begins, there are still many goals to be met towards a healthier ocean. With high expectations to continue the trend of protecting ocean spaces and decreasing plastic use, there is still a need to fill a major gap in these processes: creating opportunities for youth engagement. With youth ages 24 and younger making up nearly 40% of the world’s population, it is imperative that we involve young people in creating a movement for a healthier ocean. This past year, The Ocean Project prioritized youth engagement and youth leadership development in a few ways. We launched the collaborative campaign, Sea Youth Rise Up, and created the World Oceans Day Youth Advisory Council. We created the Council to expand the reach and impact of World Oceans Day not only on June 8th, but also year round. From dozens of applications, 11 youth were chosen from around the globe. This bright and diverse group of young people, ages 14-22, come from a variety of backgrounds and educations. They come together with unique sets of concerns and a passion for protecting our oceans. Among other things, the Council members helped decide the winner of the third annual World Oceans Day Photo Contest and also wrote a series of blog posts for the World Oceans Day website. In their blog posts, the Council members share stories of ocean issues which matter most to them, and their motivations for joining the Council. In 2017, we will be looking to significantly expand our youth initiatives, with the collaborative development of Sea Youth Rise Up and expanding the scope of activities with the World Oceans Day Youth Advisory Council. The Council will be furthering their involvement through helping us develop culturally appropriate information and materials in multiple languages and collaborating with us to create a global alliance of youth for our ocean, including tweens, teens, university-age students and other millennials. If you or your organization know young people who would like to get involved in World Oceans Day, subscribe to the World Oceans Day newsletter to learn more. We are excited to work with our partners to enable more youth take action for a healthy ocean, and together create a better future for us all. Click on the names below to read each Council member's blog post from the Youth Making Waves series. Kevwe, Nigeria Melati, Indonesia Eugenia, Portugal Brandon, Curaçao Gabriella, Canada Mohammed, Morocco Caitlin, Australia Sang Jin, Germany La Tisha, Trinidad & Tobago Baylee, United States
Continue reading
