What is the name of your organization?
Springbay Studio
What is the name of your solution?
League for Green Leaders
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Award-winning gamified, online climate action competition platform to engage children to learn about sustainability by making sustainable choices
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Toronto, ON, Canada
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
CAN
What type of organization is your solution team?
Hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Our solution empowers children to take climate action, help them buy-in for plant-based diets and influence in their families.
Food systems are responsible for a third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions. However, in Canada, poultry and red meat production has increased. Globally, meat consumption is on the rise, particularly in low and middle-income countries where incomes are growing.
To drive a shift to plant-based diets, we not only need collaboration from all stakeholders but also buy-in from children and youth, as they will become our future consumers who can sustain the changes we want to see. Innovative climate education programs are needed to cultivate an environmentally focused mindset.
Research from San Jose State University found that students who took climate change courses reduced 2.86 tons of CO2 emissions per year, representing roughly 20% of U.S. CO2 emissions per capita. These students developed a strong personal connection to climate change solutions, which was reflected in their daily behaviors and professional careers.
Children under 18 represent 20% of the U.S. population and 25.05% of the global population. Environmental education helps address the root causes of climate change while fostering buy-in from future generations for a low-carbon food system.
What is your solution?
Our solution – League for Green Leaders – is the first-of-its-kind, gamified online climate-action competition where children play to learn, play together, and play for our future. Through learning-by-doing, children grow their agency in climate action and become leaders for tomorrow. A short video about this program is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JJN1HOlZ7I
Children play our award-winning iBiome learning games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWiZEGs4xcI&t=2s), building 12 virtual habitats and learning about ecosystems, human impact, and climate change. They earn badges and gain points by completing daily activities (both online and offline) and collaborate with teammates to compete for top positions on the leaderboards.
They track their daily eco-friendly choices in food, transportation, and recycling. As their lifestyles become more sustainable, they gain CO2e savings and observe the collective impact they make with other young green leaders. To date, we have empowered thousands of kids to save over 190 tonnes of CO2e.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Our primary audience is children aged 8–17 and their teachers. Nearly ⅔ of global youth under 25 experience eco-anxiety, according to the study “Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey.”
Our solution gives children the opportunity to make a collective, measurable impact by reducing their carbon footprint. They can track their real-world decisions and race to reduce more carbon emissions by making low-carbon choices related to food, transportation, and recycling.
Recent research has shown that collective action helps young people cope with climate change anxiety. Our solution addresses youth needs by empowering them to make sustainable choices and inspire their peers to do the same.
We use the language of this generation - games and gamification - resulting in high engagement and stronger educational outcomes.
Our solution also benefits secondary audiences - organizations working toward a low-carbon global food system. These groups need early adopters and advocates. We can connect our program participants with changemakers. Youth buy in to plant-based diets as they learn about the associated low-carbon benefits through our program. They become pre-customers and collaborators in creating the change we want to see.