Winners of the 2019 Science Without Borders® Challenge!

June 20, 2019

Written by Liz Thompson

The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation is excited to announce the winners of the Science Without Borders® Challenge! The Challenge is the Foundation’s annual international art competition designed to engage students in ocean conservation through art. This year’s theme was Connected Ocean: No Barriers, No Boundaries, and No Borders, and students were asked to create a piece of artwork that shows how the oceans are connected.

Lesya Antoshkina from Ukraine is the winner of the high school category for her stunning artwork “The Bike We Ride,” which beat out fierce competition to take first place. Antoshkina lives in a small town near the sea of Azov. She loves the sea and said that she wants “to show nature’s problems through art.” With her piece, she aimed to convey that the Earth works “as one big mechanism,” and that as people, “we control the Earth, and we have to look after it.”

Second place in the high school category of the 2019 Science Without Borders® Challenge went to Chengkun Xu from China for “Unity,” and third place went to Tianyi Jia of New Jersey for “Water of Gaea.”

High School Winners:

**FIRST PLACE:** **“The Bike We Ride” by Lesya Antoshkina, Age 16, Ukraine**

**SECOND PLACE:** **“Unity” by Chengkun Xu, Age 17, China**

**THIRD PLACE:** **“Water of Gaea” by Tianyi Jia, Age 16, New Jersey, USA**

The winner in the middle school category is Zeno Park from New Jersey, who at only 12 years old created the winning entry “The Place Where Fish are Free to Roam.” With his imaginative piece of artwork, Park said he wanted to show that in the ocean, organisms are “free to go where ever they wish” but that life in his underwater islands is “heavily dependent upon the condition of their habitat.” Park said he was inspired to create this artwork “because the world is becoming polluted and ravaged. We might be forced to live in a difficult situation if we do not change our actions.”

Benedict Tan Kuok Hau from Malaysia took home second place in the middle school category with his piece “The Bigger Picture,” while Worachet Phanthura from Thailand won third for his artwork “The Ocean Life.”

Middle School Winners:

**FIRST PLACE:** **“The Place Where Fish are Free to Roam**” **by Zeno Park, Age 12, New Jersey, USA**

**SECOND PLACE:** **“The Bigger Picture” by Benedict Tan Kuok Hau, Age 13, Malaysia**

**THIRD PLACE:** **“The Ocean Life” by Worachet Phanthura, Age 14, Thailand**

Each of the first-place winners will receive $500 scholarships from the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation to celebrate their achievement and help them continue to explore the connection between science and the environment through art.

Our judges were impressed by the sheer number and high caliber of entries submitted this year. We received over 350 pieces of artwork for the 2019 Science Without Borders® Challenge from 30 different countries around the world, including Armenia, Norway, Saint Lucia, South Africa, and Thailand.

Through this competition, the Living Oceans Foundation hopes to promote public awareness of the need to preserve, protect, and restore the world’s oceans and to inspire many students to conserve and protect coral reefs around the world. Each year, students send in artwork that reflects the issues they are most interested and passionate about. Amy Heemsoth, Director of Education at the Living Oceans Foundation said that “this year, more than any other, students seemed to express through their art and written descriptions that they are concerned about the health of our planet. It gives me hope that youth from all over the world are aware of issues that negatively impact our planet and that they want to preserve it for generations to come.”

To learn more about the Science Without Borders® Challenge, visit: www.lof.org/SWBChallenge

From Dialogue to Action: Ocean Foundations Gather in Stockholm

What can philanthropy accomplish when foundations working across ocean science, conservation, and sustainable development come together around a shared purpose?

That question was at the heart of the 6th UN Ocean Decade Foundations Dialogue, held September 7–9 in Stockholm, Sweden. The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation joined philanthropic organizations from around the world for three days of discussion, collaboration, and planning focused on accelerating progress during the second half of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

Facilitated by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), the UN Ocean Decade Foundations Dialogue is a growing network of more than 30 philanthropic organizations committed to advancing ocean science, collaboration, and action. Since its creation within the framework of the Ocean Decade, the Dialogue has provided foundations with a space to exchange ideas, develop partnerships, and explore how philanthropy can help advance a healthy and resilient ocean.

Hosted by the Voice of the Ocean Foundation (VOTO), this year’s gathering began with From Depth to Action, an Opening Forum that brought nearly 100 leaders from the Swedish and international ocean community together at…

Meet IFAN: Helping Bring Navigate with Care to the Next Generation

If you’ve ever seen a lighthouse flashing from the shore or a brightly colored buoy bobbing in the water, you’ve seen Aids to Navigation at work.

Aids to Navigation, often called AtoNs, help mariners navigate safely. They can mark channels, warn of hazards, help vessels determine their position, and provide other information people need to make safe decisions on the water. Around the world, these systems help guide everything from small recreational boats to large commercial or container ships.

But safe navigation isn’t only about protecting vessels and the people aboard them. The choices mariners make can also affect the animals and ecosystems beneath and around them.

That connection between maritime safety and ocean conservation is at the heart of this year’s Science Without Borders® Challenge—and of our partnership with this year’s theme sponsor, the International Foundation for Aids to Navigation (IFAN).