EGU Public Engagement Grants are awarded each year to Union members interested in developing an outreach project to raise awareness of the geosciences outside the scientific community. For 2024, the EGU Outreach Committee has named three €1500 grant winners. Spanning a range of topics from geospatial technologies to climate change, and using a range of innovative outreach formats to connect with their chosen audiences, the 2024 winners of the EGU Public Engagement Grants represent the enthusiasm that EGU members have for sharing these subjects with many different public audiences.

“Our project on ‘Promoting STEM Among Preteen Girls: IoT and Geospatial Technology in Greenhouse Farming’ is designed to promote sustainable agriculture practices and equip young girls with essential skills in environmental data collection, IoT, remote sensing and GIS, electronics, data analysis and coding while nurturing their interest in STEM fields.” said Omowumi Alabi, Director of the Cooperative Information Network (COPINE), Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. “Our team comprising pre-teen girls and facilitators from multi-disciplinary backgrounds was thrilled to receive the grant to fund the climate-smart agriculture project which aligns with the mandate of our space applications laboratory operating under the National Space Research and Development Agency of Nigeria. We envisage that this project will revolutionize the current farming methods in Nigeria, and enhance national food security.”

Also funded is the project ‘Prison talks: Bringing climate change conversations into Irish prisons’. “This project is a climate change outreach project that has a transformative role by providing values, knowledge, and skills to help individuals reach their full potential, motivate for positive citizenship, develop social responsibility and personal transformation, increase well-being and a sense of community and belonging to live more successfully on release”, says Carla Mateus, Assistant Professor in the Geography Department at Maynooth University in Ireland and the project creator. She adds, “I am thrilled to start this project! Receiving the EGU Public Engagement Grant is an honour and an incredible support to undertake this project and to raise awareness of climate change among prisoners, a hard-to-reach audience who don’t have much access to science outreach activities.”

In addition EGU has funded the project ‘A taste of climate change’ which aims to raise awareness of climate change in rural communities by allowing people to experience potential impacts to relevant food production systems in the form of small tasting events using locally produced food and beverages. “By approaching this difficult topic with a shared and pleasurable experience, we hope to overcome negative predispositions and create spaces for more open dialogues around climate action and sustainable food systems,” say the project co-authors, Alex Valach, Christine Jurt Vicuña Muñoz and Sebastien Boillat from Berner Fachhochschule, Switzerland. “We’re delighted and grateful to receive the EGU Public Engagement Grant to kickstart and expand our project and hope that this approach will help to reshape more positive discussions leading to action around food and society in the face of climate change.”

The grants are for a period of approximately 12 months and will be awarded this month. The winners will be invited to present their public-engagement work at a future EGU General Assembly and to participate in EGU educational and outreach activities in Vienna. They are also invited to submit a paper about their work to the journal Geoscience Communication.

• EGU Public Engagement Grants