The Earthshot Prize Launches Education Initiative ‘Generation Earthshot’
London: The Earthshot Prize today launched ‘Generation Earthshot’, a new educational initiative – in partnership with World’s Largest Lesson, the education arm of Project Everyone – to help teachers around the world nurture and channel the innate creativity of young people towards solving our biggest environmental challenges.
Generation Earthshot invites students aged 10 – 15 and teachers from around the world to join the mission of The Earthshot Prize to discover the best solutions to help repair our planet. The initiative gives educators free online resources that will inspire big ideas to tackle The Earthshot Prize’s five ‘Earthshot’ goals: Protect and restore nature; Clean our air, Revive our oceans; Build a waste-free world; and Fix our climate.
Recent studies show that children and young people are aware of the urgency of our environmental challenges but can become overwhelmed and even despondent due to the scale of this problem and the solutions needed. Just like The Earthshot Prize, Generation Earthshot aims to inspire optimism that we can overcome these challenges together, helping teachers bring real-world focus to their curriculum and create a buzz of ambition in the classroom.
At the heart of the Generation Earthshot resources is a framework for creative problem solving, designed to unlock the potential of “Generation Earthshot” – a generation of aspiring young inventors, innovators and leaders who will help repair and protect our planet. It contains tools and techniques that can be applied across the curriculum, developing skills in creative problem solving and expressing ideas impactfully that are crucial for students’ future careers.
The Generation Earthshot resources are based on the principles of design thinking, through a simple four-stage process:
- A video and assembly presentation introduces The Earthshot Prize and invites children to generate their own ideas.
- The Problem Stage helps students distil the environmental problems set out within the Earthshots down to a problem that they feel locally connected to.
- The Ideas Stage helps students generate creative ideas, then evaluate and refine them.
- The Solutions Stage provides the opportunity to practise building upon and expressing an idea – through further research, pitching the idea to others, bringing it to life through art or journalism or even prototyping.
Teachers are guided through the process with clear notes and students are encouraged to share their ideas with others.
From today, teachers can explore the resources on the Generation Earthshot website and sign up for updates on The Earthshot Prize: London 2021, including the unveiling of the inspiring Prize Finalists and their ground-breaking solutions in September. From September, teachers will also be able to share their students’ ideas via the Generation Earthshot website. Students will receive a certificate and letter of thanks from The Earthshot Prize, connecting their ideas with the global effort to find solutions to repair our planet.
Following the first-ever Earthshot Prize awards on October 17th, Prize winners can become environmental heroes for Generation Earthshot, inspiring them to follow their progress and shaping their own actions going forward. In turn, Generation Earthshot aims to inspire and build a pipeline of future Earthshot Prize winners.
Ernest Gibson, Fijian climate and community activist and a Member of The Earthshot Prize Council, said: “Solving the world’s greatest environmental challenges will take everyone, all ages and from every corner of the planet. I’m excited to support Generation Earthshot and engage younger generations in this global movement to repair the planet.”
Alison Bellwood, Director of World’s Largest Lesson who developed the resources in partnership with The Earthshot Prize, said: “Learning about ideation and creative problem solving is hugely important but often overlooked. These will be key workplace skills in the future and can be nurtured in every student and classroom regardless of the resources available. We can’t wait to see all the brilliant and surprising ideas shared by children and young people around the world.”
For more information about Generation Earthshot, and to view the video narrated by Ernest Gibson, visit: generation.earthshotprize.org
For more information about The Earthshot Prize, visit: www.earthshotprize.org