Miami middle schoolers pitch real climate solutions — and some may get funded to build them
On March 18, close to 100 Miami-Dade County middle school students gathered at the Betty T. Ferguson Auditorium. There were no tri-fold posters. There was a live DJ, a crowd of cheering peers, and a judging panel waiting to hear students explain, with specificity and research backing them up, how they intended to solve a problem affecting their own neighborhoods.
The event was the inaugural Miami finale of the Green Heart STEM Challenge, a national program of the Captain Planet Foundation that tasks students in grades six through nine with identifying environmental issues in their communities and designing practical, implementable solutions. What sets it apart from typical STEM competitions is what happens after the pitching. The foundation states that winning teams are paired with professional mentors, supported in refining their budgets and project plans, and made eligible for grants of up to $1,000 to actually carry out their ideas.
“Funding student ideas so they can take action is one of the elements that make the Green Heart STEM Challenge stand apart from other STEM opportunities,” said Lauren Stone, Special Projects Manager at the Captain Planet Foundation.
A program built to go beyond the classroom
The 2026 challenge is focused on the EARTH element, with students exploring topics including food waste, soil health, tree canopy, and mangroves. The program follows a rotating four-year cycle — EARTH, WIND, FIRE, and WATER — so students who participate across multiple years encounter a different environmental system each time.
According to the Foundation, the 2026 cohort is its largest to date, involving several thousand students, over a hundred educators, and dozens of schools across multiple states. Miami is a first-year market, and by the time registration closed in December, hundreds of Miami students had enrolled.
The learning platform students used was developed in part with direct input from Maximo, a 2024 challenge winner from Atlanta.
The finalists: food deserts, damaged soil, and disappearing beaches
Eight finalist teams took the stage on March 18. Their projects reflected what students said they observed in their own schools and surrounding neighborhoods, and the themes that emerged tracked closely with conditions specific to South Florida.
First place went to The Countertop Cultivators from Homestead Middle School, whose project addresses food access in what they described as a “food swamp,” an area where processed, low-nutrient food is cheap and readily available while fresh produce is costly or scarce. Their solution: upcycle two-liter plastic bottles into self-watering containers for “Micro-Harvest Kits,” which families can use to grow high-yield crops like loose-leaf lettuce, spinach, and herbs on their kitchen counters. The proposal was striking partly because of where it originates. Homestead is one of the country’s most significant agricultural regions, yet food insecurity is a documented problem in many of its neighborhoods.
Second place was awarded to The Smart Cookies from North County K-8 Center, who focused on a soil health problem they observed firsthand, which is compacted soil and erosion in areas where students regularly cut across green space rather than using walkways. Their proposed solution involves laying a concrete shortcut path, which would eliminate the foot traffic destroying plant life, alongside the installation of raised garden beds for flowering and edible plants. The team plans to pair the physical infrastructure with peer education about why intact soil matters.
Third place went to The Sand Savers, who tackled beach erosion, a slow-moving but expensive crisis for coastal South Florida. Noting that erosion rates can exceed five meters per year in severe cases and cost local beaches more than $500 million annually to address, the team proposed educating their community on the value of groins and jetties to reduce sand loss, alongside plans to organize volunteer installation events and approach the Town Council for additional funding.
Judges, mentors, and what comes next
The finale’s judging panel included representatives from partner organizations and local institutions, and teams faced follow-up questions about how they would put any grant money to use.
The top teams will advance to the program’s Idea Incubator, a multi-session workshop where industry professionals volunteer as project managers and mentors. Past participants from Atlanta and Houston have described the incubator as the moment their projects began to feel real. Students who complete the process and submit implementation plans become eligible for grants to carry their work out over a three to six month period.
A national program expanding into new cities
The Captain Planet Foundation, which turns 35 this year, launched the Green Heart STEM Challenge in 2022. The program has since expanded to in-person markets in metro Atlanta, Houston, and now Miami, alongside a virtual track that has drawn schools from as far as Rhode Island, Arizona, Virginia, and Michigan.
Leesa Carter-Jones, President and CEO of the foundation, said the program’s community-centered design is what drives both its diversity and its outcomes. “We’re not trying to save the polar bear from Miami,” she said. “What can you do in Miami that’s going to make a difference for you and your peers and your family and your community every single day for the foreseeable future? That’s what attracts students — and it attracts a really beautiful, diverse crowd.”
For the students who competed in Miami last month, the afternoon ended with medals and trophies, and, for the winning teams, the chance to keep going. Their projects are no longer just ideas.
For more information about the Green Heart STEM Challenge, visit captainplanetfoundation.org.
Members of the editorial and news staff of miamiherald.com were not involved with the creation of this content. All contributor content is reviewed by miamiherald.com staff.
