The Lexus Eco Challenge: Teaching Kids About Conservation and Rewarding Them Too

Lexus Eco Challenge
Lexus teamed up with Scholastic to create the Lexus Eco Challenge, which inspires kids and teachers across the country to develop solutions for environmental issues

Making our world better, for cash and prizes

Many kids heading back to school this fall will learn ways to help keep our land, water and air clean. The lucky ones, though, will do this by participating the Lexus Eco Challenge, a STEM program designed in conjunction with Scholastic that challenges kids to learn about conservation while competing for scholarships.

An educational program and contest for U.S. students in grades 6-12, it is also designed to inspire and empower kids to take action to improve our environment.

The Eco Challenge, in its 10th year, is now open for registration; teams (10 students and one or two teachers) will compete to win some of the $500,000 in prizes and scholarships that will be awarded.

Teams can find rules and information at the Eco Challenge website which also has lesson plans and teacher instructions, questions to help guide discussions, facts about the topic and guidelines for a specific classroom project.

Because learning should be fun and rewarding

The idea behind the competition is to reward kids who apply what they’ve learned through the program and empower them to make improvements in their community by participating in the eco-focused team challenges.

There are two challenges students can enter: Land & Water and Air & Climate. Teams can register to participate in the Land & Water challenge through October 17, 2016 and for Air & Water from October 19 through December 12th, 2016.

And the winner is… Innovative, Inspiring, Insightful

Lexus Eco Challenge
Kids in classrooms across the country will participate in the Lexus Eco Challenge this fall

To compete, middle and high school teams, comprised of five to ten students and one or two teacher advisors, are invited to define an environmental issue, develop an action plan, implement the plan, and report on the results. The first-place and grand- prize-winning teams will be announced in November 2016 for the Land & Water Challenge, while Air & Climate Challenge winners will be announced in January 2017. Winning teams will be awarded $10,000 in scholarships and prizes and will be invited to participate in a second round of competition: the Final Challenge. Participants will be challenged to inspire environmental action around the world through innovative ideas that are communicated to a wide audience.

From the Final Challenge entries, eight first-place teams and two grand-prize-winning teams will be selected. Each of the eight first-place teams will receive a total of $15,000 in prizes and scholarships, and the two grand-prize-winning teams will each receive $30,000 to be shared by the students, their advisors and their schools.

Scotty Reiss
Scotty Reiss

Journalist, entrepreneur and mom. Expertise includes new cars, family cars, 3-row SUVs, child passenger car seats and automotive careers and culture. A World Car Awards juror and member of the steering committee, Scotty likes to say the automotive business found her, rather than her finding it. But recognizing the opportunity to give voice to powerful female consumers and create a voice to match their spending power, her mission became to empower women as car buyers and owners. A career-long journalist, she has written for the New York Times, Town & Country, Adweek and co-authored the book Stew Leonard, My Story, a biography of the founder of the iconic grocery company Stew Leonard’s. Her love of cars started when her father insisted she learn to change the oil in her MG Midget, but now it mostly plays out in the many road trips taken with her family.

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