A challenge to all youth: Design creative content on the UN's SDGs and win attractive prizes

According to Unicef, 'whether it's combating climate change, promoting quality education, or advocating for gender equality, achieving all 17 goals and 169 targets set by the United Nations is no small feat and requires everyone to collaborate, especially youth'. Photo: Freepik

Here's an interesting challenge for Malaysian youth: Design education content that you think would make learning more enjoyable and effective.

The Young Educators Challenge 2024 is a national competition, organised by Unicef Malaysia and Project ID, targetted at youth.

The task: Coming up with creative content via educational videos on any of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

With the theme “Lights, Camera, SDGs! Capturing global goals in one minute”, it aims to challenge these "young educators" to design and create content that makes learning more efficient, effective and enjoyable.

The young people have to create two short videos to raise awareness and inspire action for one of the SDGs in Malaysia, and suggest ways to make a difference. Young participants will need to pick one of the SDGs to teach and explain through fun and easy-to-understand lessons, and suggest ways to take action to make the selected SDG a reality.

There are 17 SDGs for the young educators to select from: no poverty; zero hunger; good health and well-being; quality education; gender equality; clean water and sanitation; affordable and clean energy; decent work and economic growth; industry, innovation and infrastructure; reduced inequalities; sustainable cities and communities; responsible consumption and production; climate action; life below water; life on land; peace, justice, and strong institutions; and partnerships for the goals.

The challenge, suppported by the Education Ministry in conjunction with the recent National Youth Day (on May 15), is open to all Malaysian youth (and youths residing in Malaysia) in secondary schools and universities and there are two categories. Category A is for secondary school students from the ages of 13 to 18 years, and Category B is for post secondary or university students from the ages of 19 to 24 years.

According to Unicef, “whether it's combating climate change, promoting quality education, or advocating for gender equality, achieving all 17 goals and 169 targets set by the United Nations is no small feat and requires everyone to collaborate, especially youth”.

The theme of the challenge is 'Lights, Camera, SDGs! Capturing global goals in one minute'. Photo: Unicef Malaysia & Project ID

“The Young Educators Challenge will unite youth across Malaysia to inspire and educate on the SDGs and is a universal call to action to build a brighter future,” it said.

There are five stages in the competition: Recruitment (registering to receive an exclusive link to join webinars and the YEC community), Upskilling (two-day virtual upskilling, comprising webinars to equip students with skills to create bite-size video series), Video Production & Campaign (developing, launching and promoting a series of two videos on social media platforms over the three-week competition period), Judging & Finalists Announcement (submitting videos for judging, with top five finalists going to final leg of competition), and Finals & Awards Ceremony (finalists showcasing their creations at finale and attending awards ceremony).

Successful young educators have the opportunity to win cash prizes worth RM1,500 (first prize), RM1,000 (second prize), and RM500 (third prize), respectively.

The deadline for applications to take part is 30 June 2024.

More info at: kitaconnect.org/young-educators-challenge-2024