A Gap in the Classroom Becomes a Gap in Our Ocean

Yes! I want to help kids like Lauryn turn their passion into action.

The students are ready. Ocean Wise has the programs. Your gift is the missing piece.

The next generation wants to protect our coastlines. Let’s give them a way in.

The gap no classroom can fill

Lauryn joined Ocean Wise’s Youth programming at 16. For the first time, she stepped into a real plastics lab, worked alongside real scientists, and came away with something her school had never given her: a real understanding of what was happening to the ocean, and what people were doing about it.

Kids in her community didn’t have that. Not in libraries, not in elementary schools. So she wrote a book. A children’s book about endangered Canadian wildlife, and she donated copies of it to BC Children’s Hospital, Ronald McDonald House, local libraries, and elementary schools across BC.

But the gap Lauryn found runs deeper than one missing book. Most classrooms can’t offer a real lab, a real field experience, or a working scientist.

85%

of students want more climate resources

60–78%

of students say school is their only source of environmental education

Only 12%

of students feel confident they know the causes of climate change

A future where nothing is missing

Healthy kelp forests. Recovering salmon runs. A generation of young people who know how to protect them. Because someone's back-to-school donation made sure they got the chance.

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A sea otter floating among kelp and scratching itself

What's disappearing from BC's coast

BC's kelp forests, salmon runs, and sea otter populations are under pressure. They don't recover on their own. They recover because trained, motivated people make sure they do. A new cohort of students is starting a school year that may never include a tide pool or a field lab. The window to reach them is short.

Three people look at different types of seaweed on the beach

What Ocean Wise programs provide

Ocean Wise removes the financial barriers so any student can access what Lauryn found: real labs, real scientists, real field work. Programs include seaforestation, urchin harvesting, and whale monitoring, putting missing pieces back into both ecosystems and the next generation of people equipped to protect them.

A cohort of youth participants in yellow Ocean Wise sweaters

The window is narrow

Every cohort that misses out is a gap in the pipeline of people who could restore these ecosystems. The window to intervene is narrow: for kelp forests, for salmon, for the students who could spend the next forty years fighting for both.

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