Prada Group and UNESCO have launched SEA BEYOND, a multi-partner trust fund for connecting people and ocean. Starting with a contribution of €2 million by PRADA, the fund will mobilize financial resources to promote ocean education and restore the relationship between humankind and the ocean.
The Fund will support projects that integrate ocean science, culture, and education in a synergistic and coherent manner, backing initiatives in five priority areas:
- Blue Education: to empower students with the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, by including ocean literacy in school curricula;
- Youth Empowerment and Engagement: to provide opportunities for youth and earlycareer professionals to improve their knowledge and skills and contribute effectively toocean discussions at multiple scales;
- Ocean Culture and Heritage: to improve recognition of the critical role of cultural connections between humankind and the ocean in tackling global challenges and promoting sustainable development;
- Science-Policy-Society Interface: to promote adequate representation of societal needs in policy-making processes;
- Strategic Communication and Narrative Shifting: to build skills for developing and delivering targeted messages or actions focused on challenges faced by the ocean, sustainable responses and actionable solutions.
The Fund will be supported by a scientific committee from different fields of ocean science and ocean literacy, that will provide expert advice on the most relevant themes to be included in the calls for project funding proposals. The establishment of the fund–which will welcome new partners from January 2026–will increase coherence and reduce fragmentation among projects, offering a structured and systematic approach to financing. It will create synergies to improve cooperation among stakeholders from different sectors, being a crossover between institutions, private companies, academia, NGOs, educators and the scientific community at large.
“We must protect the ocean and rethink our relationship with it – and this change starts in the classroom,” said Ms. Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director-General. “Through our SEA BEYOND programme, UNESCO and Prada are empowering a new generation to better understand and protect the ocean. This programme will fund youth-led initiatives on every continent, enhancing ocean education and culture.”
The Blue Education programs delivered by UNESCO are already reaching a large number of children and educators around the world. The Blue Schools Global Network has national coordination bodies in 17 countries across 5 continents (Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Cape Verde, Honduras, India, Ireland, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Portugal, South Africa and the USA). It also has two wider regional networks covering the European Union and the Caribbean, involving more than 2,400 schools, 7,800 teachers and 350,000 students. In April 2025, Brazil became the first country in the world recognized by UNESCO to commit to including Ocean Literacy in its national curriculum (the Blue Curriculum), integrating it into schools across the country and adapting it to regional and local contexts.
SEA BEYOND is a project by Prada Group conducted in partnership with the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (UNESCO-IOC) since 2019 to raise awareness of sustainability and ocean preservation. Since its debut, the educational program has shared the principles of ocean literacy with more than 35,000 students around the world.
