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ATLANTA, GA — The Captain Planet Foundation recently announced the launch of the 2026 Green Heart STEM Challenge, welcoming its largest cohort to date with nearly 5,000 students, 132 educators, and 71 schools across 11 states participating. 

The Green Heart STEM Challenge is delivered through a hybrid model, with in-person programming in metro Atlanta, Houston, and Miami, alongside virtual participation that enables schools in additional states to engage fully. This structure supports deep, place-based learning in core communities while expanding national access.

Designed for students in grades 6–9, the Challenge blends STEM learning with real-world problem solving, guiding students to identify environmental challenges in their communities and develop practical, implementable solutions. It follows a rotating, four-year cycle focused on EARTH, WIND, FIRE, and WATER, ensuring students explore a broad range of environmental systems and solutions over time.

The 2026 Challenge features EARTH, with students exploring issues such as soil health, tree canopy, composting, and food waste. Educators onboard students to the Challenge platform, where teams form, research, and begin building solutions rooted in local needs.

“What sets this Challenge apart is that students are mentored and funded to implement their winning ideas,!” said Leesa Carter-Jones, President and CEO of Captain Planet Foundation. “They’re not just learning about environmental challenges, they’re designing solutions and being held accountable for real outcomes.”

Since its launch, the Challenge has shown growing, measurable impact. In recent cycles, hundreds of student teams have progressed from ideas to formal project plans, with an increasing percentage advancing to implementation. Past winners have secured additional funding, expanded beyond their schools, and built long-term community partnerships, including teams in Atlanta and Houston continuing work well beyond the Challenge timeline. Across cohorts, student-led projects have tackled composting and food waste, erosion control and reforestation, water quality, repair-and-reuse systems, and circularity efforts reducing fast fashion and single-use waste.

The Challenge is supported by Accenture, Amazon, Delta Air Lines, Georgia Natural Gas, Green Mountain Energy, and Susan J. Klein, among others. Accenture employees also serve as volunteer mentors and project managers, helping student teams refine ideas, develop budgets, and prepare for implementation through the Challenge’s Idea Incubator.

Entering its fourth year, the Green Heart STEM Challenge continues to show what’s possible when students are trusted with real responsibility, and supported to turn ideas into action.

About Captain Planet Foundation
Captain Planet Foundation is an award-winning U.S.-based nonprofit that empowers young people to be problem-solvers for the planet. Over the past 35 years, more than 1.7 million children have directly participated in CPF programs, supporting more than 3,700 projects and impacting 11.4 million young people worldwide. Founded in 1991 by Ted Turner and Barbara Pyle, CPF advances environmental education through programs including Project Learning Garden, Planeteer Alliance, and the Green Heart STEM Challenge. Learn more at www.captainplanetfoundation.org.

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Students will remain silent throughout the school day or during non-instructional time to illustrate the silencing effect of anti-LGBT bias and behavior.

“GLSEN’s Day of Silence has changed me as a person,” said Christin Manus, a 17-year-old high school junior from Dacula, Ga. “When I was a freshman in high school, I was incredibly shy and not quite out of the closet. I found it difficult to love myself and speak out. I came out on Day of Silence that year. People called me fag and slammed me into lockers. Day of Silence is important to me because I want to be the voice of all the kids who are afraid and scared to be who they are.”

GLSEN’s Day of Silence is a student-led event modeled after peaceful and non-violent protests throughout history. The action was created by students at the University of Virginia in 1996, inspired by former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond and a class he teaches on the history of the Civil Rights Movement. The Day of Silence became a GLSEN program in 2001 and has grown to one of the largest youth events in the world.

“For nearly two decades, students across the country – and now the world – have come together on GLSEN’s Day of Silence to show their support for peers who are experiencing anti-LGBT bullying and to urge schools to take action to make their hallways, classrooms and locker rooms safer for LGBT students,” GLSEN Executive Director Eliza Byard said. “Our society has come a long way since students created the Day of Silence in 1996, but LGBT students still face extreme levels of victimization and we need to do more to ensure that they are safe and respected. The Day of Silence continues to play an important role in advancing that dialogue.”

More than 8 out of 10 LGBT students (82%) are harassed at school each year because of their sexual orientation and more than 6 out of 10 (64%) because of their gender expression, according to GLSEN’s 2011 National School Climate Survey. More than 31% of LGBT students said they missed at least a day of school in the past month because they felt unsafe.

The report also found that students who are more frequently harassed skip school more often, have lower grade point averages, higher rates of depression and lower self-esteem, and are less likely to go on to college.

The report shows, however, that students at schools that take action to address anti-LGBT bias and behavior – such as supporting students who participate in GLSEN’s Day of Silence – experience less victimization, have better educational outcomes and report better mental health.

To participate, students often wear shirts, stickers or buttons and hand out speaking cards to explain why they are silent. The card reads:

“Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. I am participating in the Day of Silence, a national youth movement bringing attention to the silence faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies. My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by anti-LGBT bullying, name-calling and harassment.

I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward building awareness and making a commitment to address these injustices. Think about the voices you are not hearing today.”

Students from more than 8,000 middle schools, high schools and colleges in every state, the District of Columbia and 70 countries participated in the Day of Silence in 2013.

About GLSEN 

GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, is the leading national education organization focused on ensuring safe schools for all students. Established in 1990, GLSEN envisions a world in which every child learns to respect and accept all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. GLSEN seeks to develop school climates where difference is valued for the positive contribution it makes to creating a more vibrant and diverse community. For information on GLSEN’s research, educational resources, public policy advocacy, student organizing programs and educator training initiatives, visit www.glsen.org.

About GLSEN’s Day of Silence

GLSEN’s Day of Silence is a day of action in which hundreds of thousands of students across the world vow to take a form of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. Created in 1996, the Day of Silence was inspired by Julian Bond and a class he teaches on the history of the Civil Rights Movement. The Day of Silence has become the largest student-led action aimed at creating safer schools for all, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

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