Clean Air Challenge
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"Clean Air Challenge", dedicated for secondary schools in Hong Kong, aims to raise environmental health literacy on air quality, as well as to nurture our young talents to anticipate innovative solution ideas that accommodate the multi-dimensionalities of air pollution problems around us. This is the very first year of the Clean Air Challenge, hoping to foster problem-solving capabilities and witness the creative vibrancy from the younger generation. This Challenge encompasses all the elements in S-T-E-A-M (i.e., Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) education model. Participation schools could opt for knowledge/skillset-transfer events/workshops complementing a project-mentorship scheme, alongside cross-disciplinary project ideas and final entries development. The whole campaign aims to enable effective knowledge/insight transfer, as well as to foster critical thinking and problem-based learning capacity. In addition, students are also expected to acquire a wide range of "Hard skills" (Data collection, management, analysis and visualization; Report composition and word processing) and "Soft skills" (Problem-solving through creative mindset and system thinking; Team-work and effective interpersonal communication) through a variety of seminar and workshop series. |
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"Clean Air Challenge" is a territory-wide student engagement component under the "Clean Air Neighborhood" campaign initiated by Clean Air Network (CAN) with the support of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Hong Kong, aiming to enhance youth empowerment and to raise public literacy on air pollution. Complementing CAN's district deep-dive component in Tuen Mun District, which actively engages the community stakeholders within a 1.5 km radius around the core partnering school (Tam Lee Lai Fun Memorial Secondary School), "Clean Air Challenge" aims to engage all secondary schools with the vision to replicate CAN's Tuen Mun community engagement experiences and amplify the impacts to other districts in Hong Kong. |
Media Coverage
2021-10-21 [Ming Pao (school.mingpao.com] 科大環境研究所與健康空氣行動聯合啟動「好空氣挑戰賽」 透過STEAM 學生比賽計劃提升對空氣污染認識 (Chinese only)
School ParticipationSecondary schools in Hong Kong are invited to participate in this highly engaging "Clean Air Challenge" campaign throughout the course of "3(D)" phases:
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Role of the HKUST-IENV
| HKUST-IENV is offering strategic input throughout the course of "4(I)" phases from, namely, (1) "Input" - knowledge & new skills transfer; (2) "Inspire" - inspiring students to think about what can be done (e.g. for ones own health, for schools, or for our community); (3) "Investigate" - assisting students to put hands together to develop creative solution ideas and powerful messages; to (4) "Impact" - amplifying students' messages and generating bigger impacts for the wider public. |
INPUT:
HKUST-IENV will provide a series of interactive activities (including seminars, guided tours, DIY workshops) to facilitate knowledge transfer. Students are expected to acquire updated knowledge and new skills regarding air science, data science, sensing technologies, environmental chemistry, and so on. This air quality-related knowledge "INPUT" would enrich students' undertanding about the problem and help them identify the potential knowledge gap and initial project ideas.
More than 20 knowledge-transfer activities and 30 online tutorials will be provided by HKUST-IENV as knowledge and new skill input in this "Input" phase.
INSPIRE:
With the acquired knowledge and new skills, students might gain confidence and be "INSPIRED" to identify their most concerned questions, project topic and goals, and then to shape their initial ideas into a better project proposal, which could be anything about investigating air pollution-related problems, exploring potential solutions, raising wider attentions, or advocating for cleaner and healthier air quality, etc.
Our goal in this phase is to make our young people aware of air pollution problems on the personal, community, and global levels, and inspire them to figure out creative solution ideas.
INVESTIGATE:
With the initial project ideas formulated, HKUST-IENV will be keen to play an advisory role in assisting schools to "INVESTIGATE" the problem and to formulate corresponding solution ideas. Students in this 6-month period could start to put their creativities and hands together (e.g., to start their surveys, conduct their experiments, develop their documentaries, build their model and so on) alongside the on-going knowledge-transfer workshop series as well as HKUST-student-mentorship support.
The idea of running this 6-month workshop series together with advisory/mentorship support, is to provide extended momentum to deepen their understanding about air pollution as well as to enable students to incorporate their knowledge into environmental health issues.
IMPACT:
Schools with outstanding submissions will be invited to present their ideas in the "Youth Summit & Awards Presentation Ceremony". This event will also be an engaging clean air dialogue platform for our youth talents and decision-makers, and all winning messages will be packaged into media/impact stories for amplifying the "IMPACT" for cleaner and healthier future.
Outstanding ideas will be packaged into "media/impact stories" for wider sharing and amplified impacts.
important dates
| Key events | Tentative Date |
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| Opening Ceremony & Information Day | 16 Oct 2021 (Sat) |
| Call for Ideas | 30 Oct 2021 (deadline) |
| Knowledge-transfer seminars, special guided tours, DIY workshops (optional) | Nov 2021 – Apr 2022 |
| HKUST-IENV student-mentorship program (optional) | Jan - Apr 2022 |
| Call for proposal | 31 Jan 2022 (deadline) |
| Call for submission | 17 Apr 2022 (deadline) |
| Youth Summit & Awards Presentation | Jul 2022 |
Application
(Click here for: Submission categories, judging criteria & Prizes)
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