Green Heart STEM Challenge

When the 2026 EARTH Challenge kicked off in January, students began learning about EARTH-related concepts, including food, forests, and soil. Then, Houston youth connected their lived experiences to local EARTH issues and potential solutions from a range of metro-Houston locations. Their student-led solutions were submitted in early March, with each team proposing an Action Plan … Read more

On the morning of April 15, 2026, nearly 200 youth from across the Metro-Atlanta area filed into the Fernbank Science Center’s Planetarium for a day of competition and celebration at the Green Heart STEM Challenge (GHSC) 2026 – EARTH Finale, powered by Amazon! Among the attending youth were ten finalist teams waiting to hear whether … Read more

On March 18th, nearly 100 Miami-Dade County middle school students filled the Betty T. Ferguson Auditorium as finalists in the first Green Heart STEM Challenge (GHSC) in Miami. Captain Planet [himself] danced with students as excitement built for the pitching competition that would determine which solutions would take home the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place … Read more

Each year, Captain Planet Foundation’s Green Heart STEM Challenge asks youth in metro-Atlanta and metro-Houston to form teams and identify an environmental problem in their community connected to the WATER, WIND, or EARTH. Student teams must then develop a feasible solution to solve the problem they identified. Because 2025 was the year of WIND (circular … Read more

The Captain Planet Foundation is excited to announce that the Green Heart STEM Challenge is coming to Miami!  Since 2023, the Green Heart STEM Challenge has tasked students in Atlanta and Houston with finding environmental issues within their community and developing implementable solutions to resolve student teams’ identified problems. Students participating in the challenge work … Read more

On April 26, Captain Planet Foundation partnered with the Harris County Department of Education’s CASE for Kids after-school program to host the 2025 Houston Green Heart STEM Challenge Finale at the Leonard E. Merrell in Katy, TX. The 2024 WIND Challenge (circular economy solutions focused on fast fashion waste, e-waste, or single-use plastic waste) was … Read more

On April 23rd, Fernbank Science Center’s Planetarium was filled with excited students, cheering with encouragement, and bouncing out of their seats. Their excitement could not be contained, evidenced by the spontaneous dance battles with Captain Planet, and a live DJ that kept the energy hype. This wasn’t your average science project competition. This was the … Read more

When Maximo Luciani and Johannes Els, sophomores at Chamblee High School in DeKalb County, Georgia, first heard about the upcoming Green Heart STEM Challenge in the fall of 2023, they weren’t sure they could make a significant impact on their community. That was until they discovered that the nearby Bubbling Creek, located just behind their … Read more