MILAN — Italian fashion house Prada is helping to fund a United Nations program that will enlist high school students from 10 cities to spread awareness about how humans impact the world’s oceans, organizers recently announced.
The Sea Beyond project is part of a wider, decadelong initiative to promote ocean science and sustainability being overseen by the U.N.’s cultural and scientific agency, UNESCO.
Prada said in a press release that it would contribute the proceeds from sales of its PRADA RE-NYLON capsule collection, made from plastic recovered from the seas and recycled, to finance the four-month education project.
The cities with schools participating in Sea Beyond are Berlin, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Lisbon, London, Milan, New York, Paris, Shanghai and Venice, Italy.
Local high school teachers will receive training to develop lessons on the importance of oceans, sources of marine pollution such as plastics, and on the fashion industry’s moves to more sustainable production methods to help protect the seas.
Students would create public awareness campaigns, some to be presented during a June 2-6. U.N. oceans conference in Lisbon.
”The global scale of the problems facing the oceans means that no single country or organization can fix them all,” said Vladimir Ryabinin, executive secretary of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. ”We need partnerships across science, decision-makers and the private sector.”
The French luxury conglomerate LVMH is supporting a similar project with UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere program, which aims to safeguard biodiversity.
