Thriving Corals Communities

Current state & contributing factors

Many educational systems worldwide, including the International Baccalaureate, the US High School system, the Polish curriculum, and many others, require students to complete volunteer hours or a community service learning program to develop civic skills among high school and secondary school students. 

According to studies, the effectiveness of these programs is impacted by:

• students' attitude towards the program (seeing it as another thing to quickly get off their checklist or as an opportunity for self-development), 
• the variety or availability of ideas for opportunities offered by the schools (which often only provide very surface-level community engagement opportunities due to a lack of resources). 

Often, the managers for the programs are teachers or employees holding other roles at high schools, meaning they have little time and energy to delegate toward a strong community service learning program. As a result, students feel frustrated, bored, or disengaged in their community service programs. Yet, these programs are the biggest formalized civic action learning opportunity that could be leveraged to involve students in their communities. 

Obstacles 

These projects often require students to define problems just like this Solve application question. And what is the first step? Understanding the system's current state through statistics, scientific literature, and research to build a strong basis for a project. The next generation of changemakers needs to be science literate. A key component of science literacy is ocean literacy - the ability to understand, communicate, and make decisions regarding the ocean. 

The problem we are trying to solve is that many high school students feel disengaged in their community service required program. At the same time, many students, including those who live near the ocean, lack a basic understanding of the ocean and its importance to the planet. This can lead to decreased scientific literacy and a smaller potential for making the most of the offered community service programs.

The scale of the problem

At Thriving Corals, we work with schools & communities worldwide that speak English, Spanish, and Polish. Based on our experiences, and numerous studies, the levels of ocean literacy are very low among high school students. For example, one study in Nova Scotia, Canada, showed an average score below 50% on an ocean literacy quiz. 

At the same time, research has shown that formal education is one of the biggest sources of ocean knowledge among middle through college students. 

Goal state

This is what an ideal future for community service learning programs leveraging ocean literacy looks like:

• Highly-engaged students that have a voice in their projects see value & are curious about the program, leading to increased civic engagement skills
• A community that appreciates the work of the students at local high schools, stemming from a strong understanding of the problems among the students (through literature and scientific skills)
• An increased interest in the ocean through external ocean literacy programming as opportunities for service learning, which simultaneously reallocates some of the responsibility of the school staff from diversifying opportunities for volunteering

Having a voice in community service-learning programs builds citizenship and, what follows, civic action skills. 

Our solution is a tech-connected community that will teach & empower students to collaborate on civic action projects related to the ocean and climate change. The tech incorporated into the solution includes messaging apps, online course platforms, and gamification features for education. We place great importance on the science of learning and take a place-based experiential approach, implementing concrete ocean-related projects into our teaching. 

The following are the features of the online community:

• Opportunity to connect with students around the world working on fulfilling their volunteer/service requirements in climate & ocean-related projects,
• Database of potential community partners for projects (such as non-profits or small groups working on environmental projects that are open to collaboration with organized student groups),
• Workshops and online courses with gamification elements, both made by Thriving Corals and leveraging existing resources that allow students to learn the civic action tools they need to create an impactful project,
• Competitions and opportunities for students to gain additional exposure for their projects,
• And finally, the school collaboration platform where we connect schools to these opportunities and leverage their existing program along with a place-based theory of change to implement the Thriving Corals Communities platform.

We currently have two online courses on our platform and plan to expand over the next few months. The power of our solution lies in the interdisciplinary connections we make between non-science subjects in high school and the ocean, meaning students with various interests can participate and find their own niche. For example, we have connected art history to ocean conservation, allowing students to create a joint project. With one of our online courses, we have been able to establish a program at a high school that offers academic credit for the completion of a project, further encouraging student participation. The ocean is like outer space - super fascinating for various learners and attracting attention - but more accessible, and provides a great starting point for implementing projects to learn about civic action. 

Community service teachers

Many teachers responsible for community service or volunteer programs have much to manage outside the programs. Providing them with a safe platform where students can connect and engage in meaningful programs alleviates many issues contributing to poor-quality programming caused by a lack of resources at institutions. 

High school students

High school students directly benefit from the solution. They are provided with a space to learn about the oceans, learn inspiring stories from their peers, find peer-to-peer and peer-mentor development opportunities, share their initiatives, and add to their CVs. Now, more than ever, Gen Z seeks online communities to find friends with similar interests and connect as students & friends. 

The story of Thriving Corals

As the Team Lead, I started Thriving Corals because of a community service program at my school. At first, it was just a little project, but it sparked so much interest in me that from just a recycled model of a coral reef, there started a website, and soon an entire ocean literacy program. I understand what it is like to be a high school student with different curriculums because I attended various schools (International Baccalaureate, US High School, Polish curriculum, and an independent system). However, I noticed that the program was not truly teaching civic engagement skills, and many students left without feeling more connected to their community. 

Youth-led project

Thriving Corals is not just close to the communities we serve (high school and college students) but is built by those communities. As an entirely youth-led organization, all the major decisions regarding our programming are made by an international team of young students in high school, gap years, and college. This ensures that we continuously get feedback from our target audience. 

However, we recognize that just by having a select group of youth working on the project, we cannot ensure that the opinions and needs of our users are represented. Therefore, we offer our middle & high school interns the opportunity to directly contribute to our programming while learning new skills, such as graphic design or project management. We also continuously seek feedback from the students taking our courses and utilize new ways to gain student opinions, such as the VideoAsk app, which allows users to record short videos with their feedback on the programming. This interactive video platform, an unusual feedback medium, allows us to gain insights into how people interact with our solution and continuously work to create better educational opportunities.

Communities benefit from partnerships. While we secured collaborations and developed relationships over the last five years that Thriving Corals has operated, we would greatly benefit from networking at the program events. We hope to connect to more organizations and people working on similar issues to provide even better opportunities to our network.

In addition, we hope to expand and find more places and programs we can leverage in other international curriculums. Speaking with people working in education from around the world often sparks ideas for where our solution may fit best and benefit the most people. 

Finally, we believe that while the platforms we currently use to host community events and online courses work well, we would benefit from a more integrated, single solution for the community. Some features are not encompassed with our current technology, and we would love to partner with someone who could help us develop our own platform with a user experience more targeted towards the project. We have many ideas for improvement and would like to implement them to increase the program's impact.

What we offer:

• free membership to Thriving Corals Communities
• free opportunity for teachers/institutions to align school programs to ocean literacy workshops and projects for high schools
• free opportunities for students to get involved in competitions and programs around the world
• potential advertisement space in the community for programs that align with our mission

How we offer these services:

• through an online platform
• through in-person events and Thriving Corals' Chapters (clubs at schools)

Why do they want and need them:

Students:

• Enrichment opportunity, classes are less boring
• Having a real impact on communities
• Potential future career path to do with the ocean

Parents:

• Children more involved in the community may experience better mental and physical health
• Children with "passion project" and community involvement extracurriculars get a boost for their CV, increasing their chances at entering colleges in higher education systems that place a lot of value on extracurricular achievement (e.g. United States, Canada, and some European institutions)
• Increased value of high school education 

Teachers & schools:

• Alignment to the curriculum is already there, easy to implement material saves them time
• Boost in student engagement
• Potential to save on resources while creating a better relationship for the school in the community through partnerships (and the potential to increase enrollment at the institution in the future)

Government:

• Offering an organized, aligned program to students
• Potential to implement in the classroom through formalized material as we are working on developing a textbook that will encompass similar 21st Century Skills
• Increase in civic engagement skills and increased interest in social work

Key Resources

• Our Thriving Corals team, including the community space managers and workshop leaders
• Funding for the operation of the online platform and supply of materials to the Community Chapters (in-person Thriving Corals groups and school clubs)

Partners & Key Stakeholders

We are partnering with organizations offering ocean literacy education materials and individuals willing to offer their expertise to young people for educational purposes. We are partnering with schools to implement these programs and individual teachers wanting to bring a civic action component to their ocean-related classes (including Environmental Science, Earth Science, Biology, Marine Biology, Oceanography, Visual Arts, Social Science, and others). We involve students in high school in our programs, as well as potentially their parents, that may need to provide consent for certain opportunities, such as project competitions. 

Cost Structure

The initial setup for the community platform is the most expensive. There are monthly or annual fees for some of the technology we use. The more students join the platform and the more partners we can gather, the less costly per-person the maintenance will be. In the future, when the platform reaches even more students, we may need to hire additional community managers, which can increase costs. However, generally, the initial investment is the primary cost. As more students participate, it is more likely that we will be able to charge competitions, partners, or other potential organizations interested in promoting their programs a small fee to advertise their opportunities on the platform and generate more revenue with more users. Regardless of how we scale up, we aim to offer participation in the platform free of charge to all high school students. 

Here is a brief anticipated cost breakdown to fully utilize the current technology to our advantage to facilitate community interactions online:

• $99/mo for Mighty Networks community platform
• free for Discord
• $7,000 for promotional club materials for Thriving Corals' chapters in the first year
• $5,000 for workshop and course creation materials

With this budget setup, we will be able to carry out our basic goals. This would require us to keep raising about $14,000 each year. However, we hope to raise more money, and eventually market our textbook (more about this below) as another revenue source to organize more in-person events and step up our workshop production. 

If we find the right partners, we would also be interested in developing our own platform to use for the project. In this case, a larger initial investment would be necessary. 

Channels

According to studies, most students report learning about the ocean through museum visits, television, and formal education as the three primary sources of knowledge. We plan to partner with museums and TV programs to promote this opportunity and involve schools in providing information about the program. We also want to reach out target audience through the Thriving Corals social media accounts, newsletter, and the team member's social media following. 

Revenue Sources 

We currently do not have any revenue as we are not established as any company/organization, rather, we operate as a youth group. In the future, in the next couple of months, we estimate that the following would be a breakdown of our revenue/funding sources:

• 30%: platform advertisements
• 40%: grants, investments, etc. 
• 30%: donations

As more and more people recognize the importance of ocean literacy, in the future, we hope to offer the program as an enrichment opportunity that is built-in into the national curriculums and therefore fund the program through service contracts to governments. We are currently developing a product (an ocean literacy textbook) to serve this purpose, and it will be ready within the next three months. 

Over the last 5 years, we have successfully funded our activities through youth competitions and grants. Here are some of the grants we have received and recognition that helped us further develop the project:

• BowSeat Ocean Awareness: Gold in Multimedia and Interactive: financial award
• Future Blue Youth Fellowship: grant
• Energy Globe Award Winner (first place) in Poland (Energy Globe Foundation)
• Rise Global Finalist (Issued by Schmidt Futures & Rhodes Trust): technology package