One-line solution summary:
League for Green Leaders is an online climate-action competition for children 8-14 that is empowering, playful and action-based.
Pitch your solution.
Our solution aims to motivate and quantify behavior change towards a sustainable lifestyle by inviting children to learn, play together and play for our future. We make the challenges of climate change relevant and solvable!
“League for Green Leaders” connects children with nature through play, and empowers them to make eco-friendly choices as they compete to produce the smallest eco-footprint. We help children learn to visualize the green future that can be created by their actions. By teaching climate change in a positive way, we help children develop life-lasting green habits that address the root causes of climate change. “My fourth graders really enjoyed tracking their CO2 footprint by participating in the League for Green Leaders Pilot Program.", said one pilot teacher.
Our innovation drives behavioral change and encourages young people to embrace sustainable lifestyles. It’s a scalable, gamfied platform for global educators to inspire real greenhouse gas emission reductions.
What specific problem are you solving?
72% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from households, or “lifestyle” consumption. However, behavior change is slow because sustainable habits are difficult to quantify and implement. By focusing on behavior change from a young age, we leverage the best opportunity to develop an eco-friendly mindset with life-long impact.
There are 750 million children aged 8-14 globally, with 28 million living in the US and Canada, with16.56 tons and 15.32 tons of CO2 emission per capita respectively. We need to bring the emission down to2.5 tons of CO2 per capita by 2030 and 0.7 tons of CO2 by 2050 to meet the goal of limiting the average global temperature increase to 1.5°C.
Educational education should drive behavior changes. Our solution takes an empowering, playful and action-based approach to this challenge. We invite children to play to learn and compete for the greatest CO2 savings and the best projects about nature and conservation. We quantify their behavior change, and measure the CO2 equivalent saved as they embrace greener lifestyles. Fueled with a scalable technical architecture, we can empower millions of children around the world with engaging experiences that encourage behavior change and make a difference in the environment.
What is your solution?
“League for Green Leaders” (LFGL) is the world’s first online kids competition about low-carbon lifestyle for children aged 8-14.
LFGL runs multiple times in the year. We call each competition one season. Every season runs for 14 days with different learning activities each season. Teachers and parents set up teams for their children to compete online and view their performance in real time. Children can log in to our program on a daily basis, complete fun new activities every day to win points and badges, unlock tiles in their game boards as they progress and vote for the future they want to see.
Participants’ daily activities include playing online iBiome games, completing offline science activities, and tracking the CO2 reductions from their daily choices on food, transportation and recycling. Children can also access three online games from our iBiome series to learn more about our interconnection within nature. They build virtual habitats, study nature and the environment, and learn what they can do to head off climate change. Children can access different, age-appropriate activity packages that align with their science curriculums. Our system measures and tracks children’s CO2 savings based on their greener lifestyle choices.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Our solution serves children in grade 3 to 8, and teachers who teach science to this age group.
Children living in developed countries enjoy high quality lifestyles, yet do not understand the environmental costs associated with their high GHG emissions. Currently, we don't have firm environmental-study curriculums in place that encourage young people to work consistently to reduce their carbon emissions over their lifetimes. We need an action-based educational program to engage them to track and measure their potential to make a significant impact on climate change.
We are also a solution for teachers who want to motivate their students to understand and embrace sustainability, but don't have access to the right teaching tools.
We have been focusing on educational games about environmental science for five years and successfully released 3 games about nature and our environment in the iBiome series. These games have won 9 awards and been recognized by the United Nations Environment Programme. Our network of teachers give us feedback on what they are looking for, and help us gather students’ feedback as well. Through these channels, teachers told us that our games made their students change their behaviors, from talking more about environmental problems to participating more in environmental events. Their feedback inspired us to develop our solution that aims to drive and measure behavior changes.
We have worked closely with teachers to develop the League for Green Leaders through emails, video calls, and demos. From program design to development, we worked with teachers at every step of the product development to collect their feedback, improve our design, and iterate the process until they like the program and are happy about the alignment of our solution and the curriculum. After the pilot of our program, we set up feedback calls with participating teachers and listened to their feedback on our solution. We’re also focused on the students’ experience. We collected children’s feedback through surveys, recorded how they interacted with our solution in our database, and measured the behavior changes that they tracked in our solution.
One teacher in New Jersey put it best: “Your activities and challenges align perfectly with these initiatives by getting students involved in their personal impact on the environment and practice being a change maker.”
We collect feedback from students who participated in our pilot project in April 2021, and also analyzed their performance data to measure the behavior change triggered by their participation the LFGL. In all, the 202 students from grades 4-7 who competed in our pilot program, achieved a carbon reduction of 15 tons of CO2 in just 14 days by choosing greener lifestyles. From our students’ survey, 88% of students said that they would continue to reduce their CO2 emissions after the competition. This could lead to total of 1.9 tons of CO2 emission reduction per child per year, which represents 12% and 13% of the current CO2 emission per capita in the US and Canada respectively.
When we asked which part of the League experience they liked the most. one student said: “I like the CO2 tracker thing. It was fun to record how much I recycled but it also gave us points by doing very easy work which is great.” Students chose tracking their CO2 reduction as the second most favorite activities in our competition, just 1% lower than their first choice – playing our iBiome games. 39% of students told us that they enjoyed tracking their CO2 savings because it was fun and easy to do.
When we asked them whether they would continue to save CO2 after the competition, 88% of them said that they would continue to do so after the competition. ”Of course I will [continue to track my CO2 saving]. I want to do that because if I don't there will be more greenhouse gases that will make the Earth hotter, and I don't want to die of hotness or whatever it's called. Besides, we need to make the world a better place for future generations.” said one student.
Students’ feedback helps us understand their desire for helping with climate change, and how to engage them with our program. Our program helps them take climate action and understand the importance of each personal behavior change.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Increase the engagement of learners in remote, hybrid, and physical environments, including strategies and tools for parental support, peer interaction, and guided independent work.Explain how the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge.
The problem we focus on is the lack of educational programs that empower children to take measurable climate action. It aligns with the challenge of increasing the engagement of learners in remote, hybrid, and physical environments. Without engagement, students won’t be empowered to change their behavior.
Pilot participants have confirmed that our solution provides a fun, playful and gamified learning experience mixed with online and offline activities.
The population we serve are the target audience for this challenge. Currently our users are primary school students and we can potentially expand it to high school students.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Toronto, ON, CanadaWhat is your solution’s stage of development?
Pilot: An organization deploying a tested product, service, or business model in at least one community.Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution.
We have piloted our program with 202 students coming from 6 schools: Learning Common 4 (a virtual school), Runnymede Junior and Senior Public School and Earl Haig Public School from Toronto Canada, Skippack Elementary school from Pennsylvania, Orange Elementary school from Iowa, Newbury School from New Jersey.
Our solution will be ready for first official launch in September 2021.
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Jane Ji, CEO, award-winning game designer
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new application of an existing technologyWhat makes your solution innovative?
72% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from household or “lifestyle” consumption, including mobility, diet, and housing. (Hertwich and Peters 2009). These lifestyle emissions must aim for 2.5 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) per capita by 2030 and 0.7 tCO2e by 2050 to be in line with limiting global temperature increase to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels without extensive reliance on negative emissions. Current lifestyle emissions per capita are 16.56 tCO2e for US, 15.32tCO2e for Canada. We need to motivate behavior changes in high-impactful areas in order to close this gap. However, only 4% of the high school text books used in Canada mentioned about the high-impactful areas. Behavioral change is largely neglected in climate change mitigation because it’s more difficult to quantify and implement.
Our innovative solution addresses this big gap. Using gamification successfully, our pilot results show that our League participants changed to a greener lifestyle, and saved 15 tCO2e in 14 days. With average of 75 kg of CO2e reduced, 41% of participants have taken low-carbon diet during our program, 90% of them taking greener way to commute, Fueled by gamification and educational technology, we can offer our program all year-round and localize it to serve every child in the world. Our empowering, playful and action-driven approach is fun for kids to learn about environmental science, drive their behavior change, and inspire them to continue to make more measurable emission reduction. It empowers our future generations to make the most needed behavior changes for the low-carbon, sustainable lifestyle.
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
Select the key characteristics of your target population.
Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
In which countries do you currently operate?
In which countries will you be operating within the next year?
How many people does your solution currently serve? How many will it serve in one year? In five years?
45 million children aged 8-14 in North America
How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?
Our program can track and measure the behavior changes through a feature "Tracking your CO2"
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
How many people work on your solution team?
1 full time
2 contractors
2 interns
How long have you been working on your solution?
5
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
use the innovation grant one
What is your approach to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive leadership team?
use the innovation one
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?
Organizations (B2B)Why are you applying to Solve?
One of our current mentors is a MIT alumni. Thanks for his recommendation, we get to know about MIT Solve. We hope that our solution can be selected and can get some funding through your program. Environmental education is a big topic. We need the support from a network of like-minded peers and leaders in order to create the potential impact we can create for millions of children around the world. You program will give us the access to a powerful network of impact-minded leaders across industries and sectors. This is not only critical for our fund raising, but also will be helpful for us to find potential sponsors.
As a young social focused startup, we can benefit from the mentorship, coaching, and strategic advice from experts, as well as the Solve and MIT networks. It will be critical for our growth.
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Please explain in more detail here.
We are in the educational technology sector which need big investment to grow. Although our current ask for investment is not big, we will need more investment to grow as fast as we could in 2022, and explore international market in 2023. Pitching to investors will help us to get the money to support our growth. We need support on selling more sponsorships, connecting with more school boards to adopt our solution. As one of the top institutions, MIT has influence on k-12 education. To access to MIT solve network, we can connect with more potential sponsors. This helps us to expand our client base.
What organizations would you like to partner with, and how would you like to partner with them?
need to do
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The ASA Prize for Equitable Education? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
Yes, I wish to apply for this prize
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The GM Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
Yes, I wish to apply for this prize
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Solution Name:
Springbay Studio Ltd.