Iris Prize
Awarded to an established project, with the potential to replicate and scale.
Urban Pollinators. Mexico. 20 years old. Urban Pollinators restores pollinator habitat across Tapachula and the wider Soconusco region of Chiapas, where coffee and cacao country has been stripped by deforestation and urban growth. It builds “pollinator stops”, small and large patches of native planting that reconnect fragmented habitat so native bees and butterflies can feed, nest, and move through the city. A 3.3 km native corridor is already established in Tapachula, alongside 20 pollinator stops in schools, more than 3 hectares restored, and over 5,000 students involved. The next step is the first native pollinator plant nursery in southern Mexico, turning the model into something other communities can replicate.
HappyPower. China. 22 years old. HappyPower builds play-powered, modular energy systems that turn everyday movement into clean electricity for public spaces, community use, and emergencies. The approach makes energy visible: people generate power through play, while the infrastructure keeps working when centralised systems fail. In Haikou, a co-designed energy playground survived a Category-17 typhoon and became the community’s main emergency power source, one of four pilot sites across China. The project is now moving from individual installations toward a flexible system that adapts to urban neighbourhoods, rural villages, and public events.
One Step Greener. India. 22 years old. Working across Delhi NCR, One Step Greener prevents waste from reaching landfills while restoring degraded urban land. A network of 120+ local champions drives household waste segregation, feeding a recovery system that has diverted over 1.54 million kilograms from landfill, alongside 47,500+ native trees planted across 14 urban mini-forests. Its waste curriculum has reached 100+ schools and over 500,000 people. The project is now scaling into organic composting and full-cycle recycling, building a model where communities take ownership of the environments they restore.
Break The Divide. Canada. 24 years old. Break The Divide works with young people across Canada’s Prairie provinces who carry climate anxiety, grief, and a fraying connection to the natural world. Through school workshops, facilitator training, and community gatherings, it treats emotional connection as the route back to care, agency, and collective action, and trains diverse youth, including Indigenous, newcomer, and marginalised young people, to lead sessions in their own communities. The work is grounded in Regina, Saskatchewan, with early partnerships forming in India and Nigeria. It stands out for putting belonging and lived experience at the centre of climate education.
NECOMAR. Brazil. 23 years old. NECOMAR’s Operation Shark protects threatened sharks and rays along the coast of Northeast Brazil, where overfishing and thin scientific data leave vulnerable species largely unmonitored. The project closes the gap between science and community by training artisanal fishers and divers as research collaborators, expanding data collection while building a culture of marine conservation rooted in local knowledge. It pairs participatory monitoring with environmental education in coastal communities and schools. The Prize would extend the work into a regional, citizen-science shark monitoring network.
Environmental Women: Fireproof Program for Climate Management of Forest in the Colombian Andean Mountains. Colombia. 24 years old. In the Narakajmanta Indigenous Territory of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, FIREPROOF responds to a wildfire and deforestation crisis that has degraded 9,800 hectares of humid tropical forest. The ecofeminist, community-led model restores forest and governs fire through Indigenous cosmovision: strengthening community brigades, planting 20,000 native trees, and training 300 Indigenous youth, half of them women, in both ancestral and technical fire management. It names the human stakes plainly, including the harassment and violence women face as longer fire seasons stretch their walk for water. The team has mapped 250 fire outbreaks and now aims to package the approach as a replicable system for fire-prone Indigenous watersheds.
Re-Verse Initiative. Redacted. 22 years old. The Re-Verse Initiative works along the […] River in southern […], where unsafe access and unregulated development have made a lifeline dangerous, with around twenty drownings a year along a 36 km stretch. It combines river science, heritage restoration, and community knowledge, mapping hazards and reviving mandapams, the traditional stone structures that once served as safe, flood-resilient access points. Early restoration is underway at five sites with support from Re-Earth Initiative, and the aim is to scale to ten or more. The model links cultural heritage, biodiversity, and climate resilience in one approach.
Grass Underwater Project. Tanzania. 24 years old. This UN Ocean Decade-endorsed project restores seagrass meadows along the Tanzanian coast, where more than three million people depend on the ocean and habitat loss and economic vulnerability reinforce each other. Since 2021, it has restored half a square kilometre of seagrass in Bagamoyo and trained 20 young people, and is now scaling to Tanga by pairing restoration with sustainable sea cucumber farming. Sea cucumbers improve sediment and nutrient cycling, while the farming plots give at least 50 youth an alternative income. By tying livelihoods to restoration, communities gain a direct stake in keeping the ocean healthy.
Restoring Ecosystems and Green Alternatives for Inclusive Nature and Environmental Resilience (REGAINER). Malawi. 21 years old. REGAINER restores Ndirande Mountain and the Nasolo River in Blantyre, where deforestation for charcoal has stripped vegetation and silted the river that households depend on. It moves 500 young people out of charcoal extraction and into 25 cooperatives running three green enterprises, briquettes, beekeeping, and compost, while expanding to 11 community nurseries producing 80,000 drought-tolerant seedlings. A shared-asset model funds presses, hives, and compost infrastructure rather than one-off cash grants, so the enterprises can sustain themselves. Building on a pilot that restored 20 hectares, it offers a replicable blueprint for youth-led urban ecosystem recovery.
Silay Youth: Inter–Island Blue Carbon Ecosystem Restoration, Conservation, and Protection. Philippines. 16 years old. Led from a fisherfolk family, Silay Youth restores the mangroves, seagrass, and coral reefs that coastal livelihoods in the Philippines depend on, as overfishing and destructive gear push catches lower. Over three years, 35 youth volunteers have maintained 30 hectares of mangrove, 18 hectares of seagrass, and around 180 hectares of coral reef, alongside a floating school that doubles as a way to fund the work. The plan is to replicate across three neighbouring communities, beginning with participatory coastal assessments. It shows how youth-to-youth organising can carry restoration across a whole coastline.
Stem Prize
Awarded to an existing project, established on a small scale (16-24)
Leafylife Innovation. Kenya. 19 years old. Leafylife recycles used diapers, a fast-growing and hazardous waste stream, into clean-burning fuel and construction materials like tiles and tabletops. Its process uses benign organic chemicals and far less energy and water than conventional methods, and the resulting fuel burns without smoke or soot while producing 76% less carbon dioxide than fossil fuels. The team currently works in small batches and wants to reach a tonne of waste a week to prove the system at real-world scale. Its ambition is to earn community trust first, then replicate across Africa through partnership and patent leasing.
Restoring herbal species for ecological health and sustainable livelihoods. Vietnam. 23 years old. In Chenh Venh village, a Bru-Van Kieu team is bringing back Anoectochilus formosanus Hayata, a native medicinal orchid pushed onto Vietnam’s endangered list by overharvesting driven by poverty. Having learned to propagate the plant in the lab, they are replanting 25,400 seedlings in the community forest and shifting 13 households from extraction to guardianship through sustainable harvesting and educational tours. The work protects biodiversity and soil moisture while keeping ancestral knowledge alive for the next generation. It ties the community’s prosperity directly to the forest’s health.
Suta (Water Reservoir) Conservation Project. Redacted. 22 years old. This project revives sutas, the small hand-dug water-retention systems the […] pastoral community has long used to hold flowing water across the lower Himalayan foothills. Through participatory fieldwork and visual storytelling, it documents and restores a practice that sustains households, buffaloes, and wildlife, while repositioning Indigenous knowledge as serious environmental management rather than encroachment. The groundwork came through a Coexistence Fellowship held by two members of the […]. The Prize would fund stipends and scale the revival across migratory routes, opening the door to policy recognition.
Zero Plastic Movement: City to River. Bangladesh. 21 years old. Along the dying Old Brahmaputra River in Mymensingh, where most fish species already carry microplastics, the Odommo ’19 Youth Foundation has built a working model against single-use plastic and now wants to scale it city-wide. A completed pilot converted five tea stalls to non-plastic cups, eliminating 900,000 cups a year, made three shops plastic-free, and trained 30 youth advocates. The scale-up targets 50 stalls and 10 shops, two plastic-free model zones reached through art and street theatre, and a Youth Plastic Innovation Lab for homegrown alternatives. It works on the crisis at commercial, civic, and governance levels at once.
Refugee School of Climate Adaptation and Resilience (RSCAR). Tanzania. 21 years old. RSCAR builds small, practical climate learning hubs inside refugee and host communities in western Tanzania and parts of Burundi, where longer dry seasons and lost tree cover are tightening pressure on land and firewood. Young people learn by doing, through tree nurseries, soil restoration, and climate-resilient farming, while elders share traditional knowledge of grazing and land protection. Across four schools and seven refugee zones, more than 3,400 young people have helped restore around 421 hectares and plant over 32,000 trees. The goal is for refugee youth to become the climate trainers and leaders their communities need.
Trovador. Portugal. 20 years old. Portugal has lost over half its forest cover in 25 years, and the steep, fire-scarred slopes that most need restoring are the ones crews, tractors, and drones cannot reach. Trovador is a four-legged tree-planting robot that walks terrain up to 45 degrees and plants rooted seedlings with a drill, place, and firm sequence, reaching 90% survival after a year with no aftercare. Built first from recycled materials for €15, it plants around 200 trees an hour at roughly €0.55 each and has drawn recognition from UNEP, National Geographic, and WWF. The Prize would fund a field-ready build and an independently monitored 10-hectare pilot at Mafra National Park.
HydroHarvest. United States. 17 years old. HydroHarvest tackles food insecurity in Greater Washington, D.C., where roughly a third of families struggle to afford healthy food, by helping them grow their own. Its hydroponic gardens, made from reused materials, cut water use by 90%, need no pesticides or electricity, and yield several pounds of leafy greens a month, distributed through food banks alongside planting workshops and a produce-gleaning programme. So far it has engaged 150+ young people, distributed 150+ pounds of produce, and built 130+ hydroponic kits. The aim is a replicable model that student leaders can run in their own communities.
Youth Green Innovation for Education (YGIE). Sierra Leone. 23 years old. In off-grid rural Sierra Leone, where most households lack reliable electricity and students study by unsafe kerosene light, YGIE converts plastic and e-waste into solar-powered backpacks that give children clean light to learn by. The project trains marginalised youth, especially girls, in recycling, solar technology, and green entrepreneurship, turning waste into both a resource and a livelihood. It has already reached over 600 students and recycled hundreds of kilograms of waste through a growing network of young innovators. It connects climate action, education, and youth employment in a single circular model.
Recycled Grace. Uganda. 23 years old. Recycled Grace turns single-use plastic bags into fabric, then into shoes and raincoats, in a Kampala that consumes 600 tonnes of plastic a day and recycles barely 1%. The work is personal: the founder lost two school friends in the 2024 Kiteezi landfill collapse that killed more than 100 people. Each pair of shoes reuses 20 plastic bags and each raincoat 100, combining recycled fabric with rich African textiles for the tourism market while employing people from Kampala’s slum communities. The plan is to diversify products toward a zero-waste, self-sustaining enterprise.
Seed Prize
Awarded to a new idea, not yet established (14-24)
Greenify […]. Redacted. 16 years old. Walking to school in […], the founder watched untreated landfills leach into the […] River that supplies drinking water and irrigation. Greenify […] is an app that connects residents and local government around waste: people schedule pickups by pincode and earn rewards for recycling, while authorities see collection data, plan routes, and track what actually gets recycled. The idea grew from noticing that community and government were each making isolated efforts with nothing to link them. The Prize would fund a basic working version to test in her neighbourhood and bring to local authorities.
Ecofurn Ghana. Ghana. 23 years old. Ecofurn Ghana turns plastic waste and rice husk into durable composite boards, then into school desks for classrooms where over 2.3 million Ghanaian children learn without proper furniture. The approach links three problems usually treated separately: plastic pollution, agricultural burning, and the deforestation driven by demand for timber furniture. An initial prototype board and desk are built, with the focus now on durability, safety testing, and small-scale production. The Prize would fund testing, a locally fabricated machine, and a first batch of desks for a partner public school.
Protecting the Wings of Precious and Endangered Birds of the Western Ghats. India. 22 years old. This project protects endemic and endangered birds in the forest-fringe areas of the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu, where habitat loss and fragmentation are thinning populations that forests depend on for seed dispersal and pest control. It pairs scientific bird surveys and habitat assessment with native tree planting, nesting-site protection, and the restoration of natural water sources. Local youth, farmers, and volunteers are trained to monitor birds and lead conservation in their own areas. Now in early implementation, it aims to turn community participation into long-term stewardship of one of the world’s key biodiversity hotspots.
Vasup. Kenya. 19 years old. After floods worsened by plastic-clogged drainage killed 110 people in Kenya, this team set out to replace single-use plastics with something that breaks down fast. Vasup is a fully organic alternative made from resin, starch, sucrose, and fibre that stays stable in normal conditions but degrades almost completely within 24 to 48 hours in heat and humidity, then enriches the soil. Starting with sweet wrappers, it was recognised at Young Scientists Kenya 2023 and endorsed by university professors. The Prize would fund lab testing, a provisional patent, and a first working product.
Design and fabrication of a small-scale filter unit for PPD in salon wastewater. Kenya. 23 years old. As Nairobi’s beauty industry grows, salon wastewater is carrying PPD, a toxic, carcinogenic compound from hair dyes that standard treatment systems are not built to remove, into the environment and the water supply. This project designs a small, low-cost filtration unit that salons can install before wastewater reaches the sewer, using adsorption through locally available coconut husks to trap the pollutant. The next step is lab testing with real salon wastewater to build a working prototype and tune its performance. The goal is a simple, affordable unit that can be widely adopted.
Dance to Restore Nature. Malawi. 22 years old. In urban Lilongwe, where most household waste is dumped into rivers feeding Lake Malawi and most homes burn charcoal from the Dzalanyama catchment forest, this project uses traditional dance to move people to act. The founder, trained in Malawian dance since childhood, will teach 15 girls ten traditional dances and compose songs about local environmental issues, performing for 6,000 learners and 4,000 community members. Each performance is followed by action: tree planting, cleanups, waste sorting, and turning collected plastic into crafts. It pairs cultural knowledge with measurable environmental outcomes and youth livelihoods.
ZineTalk: Youth Stories on Climate and Nature. Indonesia. 14 years old. In fast-urbanising Bekasi, where open land and small rivers are giving way to roads and flooding, ZineTalk gives teenagers a space to talk about the environmental change they actually see. Through small workshops, participants reflect on local heat, lost green space, and plastic-choked waterways, then make a collaborative zine of drawings, stories, and poems, alongside a short youth podcast. It started from a simple observation: many young people care about climate but rarely have somewhere to put their ideas. The Prize would fund a pilot workshop in lower-income schools and share the stories across the community.
Project Salak. Nepal. 24 years old. Project Salak protects the Critically Endangered Chinese and Indian pangolins, among the most trafficked mammals on earth, across Nepal’s Chitwan, Makwanpur, and Parsa districts along a known trafficking route. Led by the youth organisation YASEN, it builds community guardian networks, training 60 members, many of them Tharu and Chepang youth, to record sightings, report trafficking, and teach conservation. Awareness work in schools and community forests aims to reach more than 3,000 people. The goal is a low-cost, replicable model that local guardians keep running long after the funding ends.
Community Stewardship for Managing Ghost Nets Along the […] Coast. Redacted. 23 years old. Along the […] coast, abandoned “ghost nets” keep killing marine life and entangling nesting sea turtles long after fishers lose them at sea, yet the problem is rarely documented. This project works with local youth in […] and […] to map ghost-net locations using simple mobile tools, organise safe removals, and work with women’s groups to turn recovered nets into ropes and baskets. It begins by listening, building trust with fishing communities before fixing on a plan. Tested in two villages, the model is designed to expand along the coast as a community-led approach to cleaner seas and shared stewardship.
