reEarth: Young Voices for a Sustainable Planet

We believe a child with a paintbrush can say things adults are too careful to say. For 18 years, through The Little Art, we have watched children in Pakistan, the UAE, and now New Zealand make sense of their world through art and tell the truth about it. Again and again, we have seen how young people can use the power of art to start the right conversations, the honest, urgent ones. When our co-founder, Shoaib Iqbal, came to New Zealand as an Edmund Hillary Fellow, we set out to turn that belief into a movement: a way to bring children and youth here and in countries around the world into the climate conversation through their own creativity. In 2024, that became reEarth, our global invitation for 4–25-year-olds to answer one question: what does a sustainable Earth look like to you?

Their answers floored us. In our first year, 1,341 young artists from 35 countries submitted paintings, photographs and digital art across four themes: Life on Earth, Life Under Water, Beyond Humans, and People and Planet Connected. A seven-year-old in Aotearoa painted a whale carrying the ocean's grief. A teenager in Bangladesh photographed families "sleeping on the edge of survival" as rivers rise. A child in the UAE imagined a green heart in the middle of the desert. Climate stops being an abstraction when you see it through a child's eyes, and that is exactly the point.

We didn't keep it on a screen. We took the work into the world: an exhibition in Auckland at the Hillary Innovation Summit (70 works, 700+ visitors, climate leaders, innovators and the young artists themselves), and a showcase at Venice Marco Polo Airport, a city literally on the frontline of rising seas, where the art reached roughly 40,000 travellers over five days. A world-class jury including celebrated photographers, media artists and curators from France, Italy, Austria, Pakistan and the UAE juried the work, and every single participant received recognition.

In our second year we grew again. We added a third international showcase at the Xposure Festival in Sharjah, expanded our jury to twelve global artists, and brought on advisors including Professor James Renwick, New Zealand's former Climate Change Commissioner and an IPCC lead author, alongside climate scientists and sustainability leaders from Oxford to EarthShare USA. Hundreds more young people were celebrated across cash prizes, jury's choice awards, finalist recognitions and spotlight selections and entire schools, from Tāmaki Makaurau to Nairobi to Milan, took part as a community. In the second year, nealry 2500 children and young people participated.

Here's what we're raising funds for the third cycle. Our participation has grown sharply each year, and we're now opening the 2026 call to reach our largest cohort yet: a goal of around 5,000 young artists. With the funds raised, we want to upgrade our technology platform to include a new submission and communication system. Over the next 12 months, we will run the global call, convene the international jury, deliver free certificates to every participant, award cash prizes to winners, and stage three physical exhibitions in Auckland, Venice and Dubai so this generation's climate art is seen by tens of thousands of people in person, not just online.

Why this matters now: climate education for young people is patchy, and most of it is delivered to them rather than by them. reEarth flips that. It treats children and youth as climate communicators with something real to say, connects them across borders around a shared planet, and brings their voices into the rooms, summits, festivals, airports where adults are making decisions. For the young artists, it's confidence, recognition and a sense that their concern can become action. For everyone who sees the exhibitions, it's a reminder of exactly who we're protecting the planet for.

We've proven the model twice along with its growth curve. Matching funds will let us do it bigger, reach more young people who can't otherwise afford to take part (we offer school discounts and free participation pathways), and keep the exhibitions free and public.

What our reach looks like in numbers:

Year 1: 1,341 young artists · 35 countries · 2 international exhibitions (Auckland, Venice) · ~40,700 in-person exhibition viewers
Year 2: 2450 young artist, expanded to 3 exhibitions (added Sharjah) · 12-member international jury
Year 3 goal: ~5,000 young artists · 35+ countries · 3 exhibitions (Auckland, Venice, Dubai) · free entry pathways for under-resourced schools