Milan and Venice, June 8th, 2021 – Today, on the occasion of the World Oceans Day, Prada Group and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, project office of the Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe, announce the launch of the second edition of SEA BEYOND, a tailor-made educational programme dedicated to ocean preservation and sustainability, originally debuted in 2019.

Given the success of the first edition and with the intention of linking the project to the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, officially started in January 2021, the programme will be enriched with global and local initiatives dedicated to all ages.

The aim is to engage the highest number of people in the Ocean Decade through a set of different activities: 

• Following an extremely positive experience in previous years, Prada Group and IOC-UNESCO will design a new educational module for secondary school students around the world, continuing to work with the same countries, which took part in the first edition, but also adding other nations that have already expressed interest in participating, such as Brazil, Peru and Namibia.
  At the end of the learning process, an innovative global contest will be launched to select the best student projects – to be nominated, once again, by an international jury of “Sea Beyonders”, experts who dedicated their lives to the ocean and education; 

• An additional component will be the involvement of Prada Group’s 13,000 employees around the world. Targeted resources will be developed to make everyone more ocean literate and to encourage an active role in protecting the ocean. Engaging webinars as well as an app will be used to commit every country and organize a “sustainable challenge” on a global scale; 

• In the context of the Ocean Decade, Prada Group will support IOC-UNESCO in founding the “Kindergarten of the Lagoon” (Asilo della Laguna) in Venice. The kindergarten will be established on the basis of outdoor education principles. The first of its kind in a lagoon, it will be launched in 2022 with some 20 children as an experimental phase. 

“We are very proud of the success of Sea Beyond, stemming from UNESCO’s Oceanographic Commission’s passion to continuing to dedicate every day to the promotion of a more responsible ocean. Today we are pleased to launch a new phase of the project, which plans to address not only students from all over the world but also a wider audience, with the aim of engaging local communities and our employees on a global scale”, said Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada Group Head of Corporate
Social Responsibility. 

“UNESCO is pleased to continue its collaboration with the Prada Group. This partnership has led to the successful implementation of ocean literacy projects; it has also supported the activities of museums during the pandemic. Promoting public-private partnerships, such as this one, is critical for the successful implementation of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. The Ocean Decade provides an unparalleled opportunity to promote and enhance the way we study and understand the ocean; it can revolutionise public engagement towards the protection and safeguarding of the ocean. Ultimately, these new initiatives promoted in collaboration with the Prada Group will constitute an important step forward towards the achievement of the ocean we want,”  declared Ana Luiza M. Thompson-Flores, Director of the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe.