AWARD-WINNING ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE SCHOLAR, ADVOCATE, AUTHOR DR. BEVERLY WRIGHT TO PRESENT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS EFFECT ON DISADVANTAGED COMMUNITIES

The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council member will give a virtual presentation on Thursday, May 26, 2022 Grand Rapids, Michigan – April 26, 2022 – The Wege Foundation will host the 25th annual Wege Speaker Series (www.wegespeakerseries.com) on Thursday, May 26 at 4 pm.

This year’s event will be virtual.

Presenting is Dr. Beverly Wright, award-winning environmental justice scholar, advocate, author, civic leader and professor. She is the founder and executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice in New Orleans, a community-university partnership organization that focuses on health inequities and environmental racism along the Louisiana Mississippi River Chemical Corridor and the Gulf Coast Region. The Center provides education, health and safety training, and job placement for residents in climate-impacted communities within the United States. Recently, she was appointed by President Biden as a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council to help support his whole-of-government approach to the climate crisis.

As a child growing up in southern Louisiana, Wright’s understanding of environmentally compromised communities was close to home. She lived along the highly polluted 85-mile stretch of land between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known as ”cancer alley.” These childhood experiences shaped her eventual career choices in research and activism. “Dr. Wright combines her knowledge as a scholar and her experience as an advocate to assure equitable approaches to addressing climate change,” said

Wege Foundation President Mark Van Putten. “There can be no better time for Dr. Beverly Wright to describe her groundbreaking strategies as Grand Rapids and West Michigan develop and implement local climate change strategies.” “We are looking forward to Dr. Wright’s lecture and learning how we may be able to complete similar projects in Grand Rapids,” said Alison Waske Sutter, Sustainability and Performance Management Officer at the City of Grand Rapids. “Her talk will come on the coattails of a recent invitation for our city to participate in the White House’s national Building Performance Standards (BPS) Coalition.” “With data from new screening tools and studies, the extent of environmental injustice in our neighborhoods with the highest concentration of People of Color is becoming impossible to ignore,” said Sergio Cira-Reyes, Climate Justice Catalyst at the Urban Core Collective. “Dr. Wright’s research and expertise is exactly the wisdom we desperately need to start addressing these layers of injustice woven into other social determinants of health.” Dr. Wright received the 2003 Distinguished Alumni Award from the State University of New York, Buffalo, the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership Award in 2006, the 2008 EPA Environmental Justice Achievement Award, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition 2008 Community Award, the Ford Motor Company’s Freedom’s Sisters Award in 2009 and the Urban Affairs Association’s SAGE Activist Scholar Award in 2011. She was also recognized by theGrio as one of its 100 History Makers in the Making.

She is the author of numerous scholarly articles and has co-authored the books Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina and The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response to Disaster Endangers African-American Communities.

Dr. Wright received a Ph.D. from State University of New York at Buffalo.

Please register by May 25, 2022 at: wegespeaker2022.eventbrite.com

Partners for the 25th Wege Speaker Series event include:

  • City of Grand Rapids
  • Michigan Black Expo
  • U.S. Green Building Council of West Michigan
  • Urban Core Collective

Click here to download the flyer.

STATEMENT OF THE WEGE FOUNDATION ON GRAND RAPIDS POLICE OFFICER KILLING OF PATRICK LYOYA

We mourn the killing of Patrick Lyoya by a Grand Rapids police officer. We join all those grieving for Mr. Lyoya’s family and friends and for our community. We have pledged to listen to and learn from the voices of outrage and suffering and to support organizations working to right longstanding injustices and to bring systemic change.

In this moment of grief, we seek to highlight and support the leadership of our grantee partners in the arduous work of dismantling systemic inequities still lingering in our community. Several organizations, including grantees, have put forth specific proposals to reform policing and law enforcement. We are committed to supporting effective civic engagement by front-line organizations in this effort.

We pledge to strengthen the Foundation’s support through its grants and investments of organizations working for concrete, systemic progress in racial justice including policing practices, opportunities for wealth creation, economic advancement, access to a healthy environment and community wellbeing. In addition to policy and systems reform, we are also committed to helping address the community trauma from this tragedy and from recurring instances of injustice.

There are many things about our community of which we are proud. But, we are ashamed of the continuing systematic racism and injustice so brutally illustrated by this tragedy. The tragic ending of Patrick Lyoya’s life must be an impetus for effective and lasting societal change.

– END –

Wege Prize 2021 Winners

KENDALL COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN OF FERRIS STATE UNIVERSITY (KCAD) ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF WEGE PRIZE 2021, AND PLANS FOR GROWTH, BIGGER PRIZE PURSE FOLLOWING AWARD OF 5-YEAR GRANT EXTENSION.

A TEAM OF STUDENTS FROM GHANA AND COSTA RICA WINS FIRST PRIZE AND $15,000 USD WITH TRANSFORMATIVE CONCEPT TURNING WOOD WASTE INTO MUSHROOM PRODUCTION.

Tackling the world’s most pressing, complex “wicked problems” by addressing global issues with design thinking, the winners have been announced for Wege Prize, an acclaimed international student design competition organized by Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (KCAD). The winning teams, sharing a $30,000 USD purse and earning broad visibility for their ideas, hail from Chile, Costa Rica, Ghana, Malawi and Tanzania. The students presented their ideas at a live online event as the culmination of a nine-month-long competitive process supported by expert judges.

As reported widely in trade and news media, Wege Prize provides a powerful and accessible platform for any college or university student in the world to develop tangible solutions to serious challenges, benefiting from a collaborative process that transcends disciplinary, cultural, and institutional boundaries. The resulting solutions — including many that go on to join incubators and earn startup funding — address climate and environmental impacts, social and economic disparities, and cycles of waste, hunger and poverty.

This month, KCAD has announced that Wege Prize has been awarded grant funding to extend the annual competition for five more years, with a new growth plan to increase the prize purse by over 100% to $65,000 USD, to double its pool of judges, and to begin exploring future extensions of Wege Prize to serve more students and communities.

“Wege Prize teams are inspired to reframe the way we produce and consume by collaboratively developing products, services, business models, and other solutions that address systematic issues,” says Gayle DeBruyn, KCAD professor and Wege Prize organizer. “The participating teams also help chart paths to transition from our current linear economy — in which we take, make, and dispose — to a circular economy that’s regenerative and restorative by design. We need to champion more of these creative, daring problem- solvers!”

Earning first place in 2021 is the team AgriTrade Hub, which unites a student from Costa Rica’s EARTH University with three universities in Ghana to not only find uses for the problematic wood and sawdust waste created by the Ghanaian logging industry, but also to turn those waste materials into agricultural and economic value. Among the nutrient-giving byproducts of the proposed solution is a mushroom compost ideal for fertilizing newly planted forests and valuable ornamental trees. (More details follow, below.)

“Our solution is geared toward supporting the local economy, and contributing to food security and nutrition through the production of nutrient-rich oyster mushrooms,” says AgriTrade Hub team member Victoria Akwamaa Yeaboah, a student in agricultural science and natural resource management at EARTH University. “With our focus on ensuring that nearly all the resources are used up, we’re contributing to a circular economy that helps redefine the universal issue of wood waste.”

At the 2021 Wege Prize Awards event held online recently, AgriTrade Hub presented as one of five finalists that emerged from an initial field of 35 teams — a record field for Wege Prize — representing 29 countries, 88 academic institutions, and 114 unique academic disciplines. The five finalist teams presented bold ideas that evolved over nine months of intensive research, testing, networking, prototyping, and direct feedback from the competition’s panel of expert judges.

AgriTrade Hub won the $15,000 first place prize. The second- and third-place teams were awarded $10,000 and $5,000 respectively, and the two other finalists earned $1,000 each. (The total cash awards given will more than double in the 2022 iteration, says DeBruyn.)

 

Click here to learn more about the 2021 winners and finalists.

BEST-SELLING AUTHOR AND EDUCATOR DR. ROBIN WALL KIMMERER TO PRESENT ABOUT RESTORING HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS TO THE ENVIRONMENT

The founding director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment will give a virtual presentation on Thursday, May 27, 2021

Grand Rapids, Michigan – March 25, 2021 – The Wege Foundation will host the 24th annual Wege Speaker Series (www.wegespeakerseries.com) on Thursday, May 27 at 4pm. The flagship event took a hiatus last year due to the
pandemic. This year’s event will be virtual.

Presenting is Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, renowned author, educator and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. As a scientist, Dr. Kimmerer’s interests include the restoration of ecological communities and the rejuvenation of human relationships to land. She holds a PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin. Her presentation is titled Healing relationships with the natural world.

“Dr. Kimmerer teaches us how to restore healthy relationships with each other and with the environment,” said Wege Foundation President Mark Van Putten. “She offers an inclusive vision for Grand Rapids in planning to restore the Grand
River rapids that were so important to indigenous people.”

Dr. Kimmerer lives in Syracuse, New York where she is a SUNY (State University of New York) Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology and founding director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.

Dr. Kimmerer’s latest book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, has earned critical acclaim. She writes, lectures and interviews widely, including features on TEDx, NPR and Orion magazine. In 2015, she addressed the general assembly of the United Nations.

Please register by May 26, 2021 at: wegespeaker2021.eventbrite.com

The first 200 registrants will have the opportunity to receive a discounted price on a signed copy of Dr. Kimmerer’s book.

Partners for the 24th Wege Speaker Series event include:

  • City of Grand Rapids
  • Downtown Grand Rapids Inc.
  • Grand Rapids WhiteWater
  • Grand River Bands of Ottawa Indians
  • River for All riverforall.com

About The Wege Foundation

Founded in 1967 by Peter M. Wege, The Wege Foundation focuses on planting seeds that develop leaders in economicology, health, education, and arts, and enhance the lives of people in West Michigan and around the world. For more information, go to wegefoundation.com.

Download PDF Information

Wege Prize 2020 Design Competition Winners

Global Student Design Competition  Ignites Game-Changing Sustainable Solutions  for the Economy of the Future, Provides Powerful  and Accessible Platform for Systemic Change

Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (KCAD)
Announces Winners of Wege Prize 2020 Design Competition; 2021 competition launched

Team of students studying in Uganda and the United States wins top prize of $15,000 USD with a proposal to transform one of the world’s most invasive plants into a biodegradable raw material that could help make single-use plastic products obsolete.

Grand Rapids, Mich. June 3, 2020 – Covid. Climate. Injustice. Waste. Disparity. Hunger. Poverty. So much is at critical mass in our world that we have no choice but to address multiple interconnected global issues simultaneously. And if we’re to solve these complex, layered problems, we need individuals capable of working across the barriers that divide us to drive systems-level change.

That’s why Wege Prize—an annual international design competition organized by Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (KCAD)—provides a powerful and accessible platform for any college or university student in the world to develop tangible solutions to “wicked” problems through a collaborative process that transcends disciplinary, cultural, and institutional boundaries.

Wege Prize teams are inspired to reframe the way we produce and consume by developing products, services, business models, or other solutions that address systematic issues while also helping power a transition from our current linear economy—in which we take, make, and dispose—to a circular economy that’s regenerative by design.

At the recent 2020 Wege Prize Awards, the five finalists that emerged from an initial field of 29 teams— representing 24 countries, 64 academic institutions, and 100 unique academic disciplines—presented bold ideas that evolved over nine months of intensive research, testing, networking, prototyping, and direct feedback from the competition’s panel of expert judges.

The winners of Wege Prize 2020 are:

1st Place ($15,000) – Hya Bioplastics – Click here to learn more about the Hya Bioplastics team.

Institutions represented: Georgia Institute of Technology (United States), Makerere University (Uganda)
Disciplines represented: Commerce, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Civil Engineering, Industrial Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering

Solution: What if one of the world’s most invasive plants could help spell the end for single-use plastic?
Hya Bioplastics is developing a process that blends dried water hyacinth fibers and boiled cassava starch into a biodegradable raw material for the production of disposable plates, cups, silverware, and packaging. At the same time, the process helps mitigate the threats posed by the spread of water hyacinth.

With approximately 86% of the more than 400 million tons of plastic produced in the world each year entering the waste stream, the need for alternatives has never been more dire. Similarly, water hyacinth is invading already-scarce freshwater sources around the world at an alarming rate, growing up to 17.5 tons per hectare per day and harboring disease-spreading organisms, compromising drinking water supplies, and negatively affecting other marine life in the process.

The true elegance of Hya Bioplastics’ idea lies in its use of one problem to solve another, and in the team’s keen understanding of the systems they’re disrupting. The team has already developed prototype sheets of its proposed material, begun testing product designs with it, and vetted its compostability through a number of different methods.

“We’ve seen a lot of examples of bioplastics out there, but the use here of local invasive species as feedstock is particularly insightful,” said judge Alysia Garmulewicz, an associate professor at Universidad de Santiago de Chile and fellow at the University of Oxford who researches digital fabrication and the circular economy. “This solution is also incredibly replicable and scalable, with a promising potential for real-world implementation.”

2nd Place ($10,000) – Further Food – Click here to learn more about the Further Food team.

Institutions represented: Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (United States), Grand Valley State University (United States), Oakland University (United States)
Disciplines represented: Collaborative Design, English Literature, Environmental and Sustainability Studies, Graphic Design, Nursing

What if we could streamline and reduce pre-consumer food waste at a university level by offering to-go meal packages and on-campus composting?
Further Food is developing a regenerative system that transforms unused food from campus dining services into packaged meals made available to students during the final hours of cafeteria operations, while leftover waste is diverted to an on-campus composting facility. The system keeps nutrients cycling through campus while also creating economic value, social capital, and educational/research opportunities.

In the United States alone, university students each produce an estimated 142 pounds of food waste each year, while the equally-wicked problems of hunger and food access persist. By interfacing with campus dining services at their respective institutions and engaging in extensive customer validation studies, Further Food was able to envision a viable, profitable, and scalable service that designs out waste, increases food access for students in need, and generates additional revenue, material capital, and educational opportunities for universities.

In addition, Further Food’s solution has the potential to help reverse the stigma around leftover food in ways that could have a profound impact not just on campus dining services, but across our society.

“We’ve heard ideas about campus food waste before, but what really impressed the judges is how this team’s vision extends beyond a single campus and into a model that could be replicated on any campus,” said judge Colin Webster, a learning content manager with the UK-based Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a global leader in circular economy research, advocacy, and development. “But the biggest implication for me is the potential for this to go beyond a campus and into all sorts of different environments. If you get this right, the model could really take off and become a new normal for how to deal with food waste.”

3nd Place ($5,000) – Pellet – Click here to learn more about the Pellet team.

Institutions represented: Ashesi University (Ghana), EARTH University (Costa Rica), Trinity College (United States)
Disciplines represented: Agricultural Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Business Administration, Mechanical Engineering

What if organic waste from urban restaurants and residences could give rural farmers access to affordable and environmentally friendly fertilizer?
Pellet is developing a system to do just that by tackling persistent waste streams while creating economic opportunity, nurturing soil health, and aiming to jumpstart a budding industry in Rwanda in the process.

With 80% of Rwandans involved in agriculture, and the industry comprising 30% of the country’s GDP, the demand for fertilizer is incredibly high, around 49,000 megatons in 2019 alone. Most famers rely on imported synthetic fertilizer that are not only expensive, they contaminate groundwater, damage existing microorganisms, and contribute to global warming due to their volitization.

At the same time, the lack of proper waste disposal in cities like Kigali creates a host of social and health problems. So, instead of discarding organic waste into poorly-designed landfills, Pellet proposes to upcycle this waste into organic fertilizer pellets that promote soil health, increase crop yield, and negate detrimental environmental impacts, all at a 35% cheaper cost to the farmers.

Pellet has already prototyped their process and product at EARTH University, where they achieved 50% greater yield on a maize crop planted with their organic fertilizer versus a crop fed with imported synthetic fertilizer.

“Pellet brought incredibly solid research, proven results, and a rock-solid business model to the table that really impressed the judges ,” said judge Christopher Carter, an educator, seasoned animator/story board artist, and a nationally-known sculptor who’s also a trustee and board member of The Wege Foundation, which provides financial support for Wege Prize. “More than just filling a need, their product impacts the social, economic, and agricultural sectors of Rwanda in interconnected ways that could serve as a powerful example for other areas in the region to follow.”


The other two finalist teams—Team Biochar and yOIL—were each honored with a $1,000 Finalist Award.

Team Biochar, composed of Ghanaian students studying in Ghana, Kenya, the Netherlands, and Uganda, developed a system to convert Ghana’s abundance of pineapple waste—which is currently either burned, discarded on the ground/in bodies of water, or buried in the soil—into biochar and compost that can be used to improve soil fertility, increase crop yield, and enhance food security while eliminating environmental pollution and reducing the spread of disease. Click here to learn more about Team Biochar.

yOIL, a team of Canadian students studying at the University of Calgary, developed a biological system for addressing the problems Canada’s unpredictable climate and short growing season pose to the country’s canola oil industry, namely excess chlorophyll from seeds diluting the quality of the oil while raising production costs, and a fungus that leaches nutrients from canola crops in cold and humid conditions. The team’s system removes chlorophyll from the oil and repurposes it into an anti-fungal treatment, reducing costs and waste while increasing product quality. Click here to learn more about the yOIL team.

Due to COVID-19, the 2020 Wege Prize Awards were the first to be held in an entirely virtual format. Despite the challenges of social distancing, all of the five finalist teams were able to create what judges collectively called the competition’s strongest body of finalist ideas in its seven-year history.

“With everything the global COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing loss of normalcy has taken from us, it’s also given us an enormous opportunity,” said Gayle DeBruyn, KCAD professor and Wege Prize organizer. “Because why should we settle for returning to normal when we have a chance to build something better? A world where we stop accepting wicked problems like waste, environmental degradation, poverty, and inequality as inevitable and start challenging, rethinking, and redesigning the systems that perpetuate them. Wege Prize is about so much more than the awards; it’s about empowering ourselves and each other to embrace new ways of thinking, seeing, and working together.”

Thanks to the continuing financial support of The Wege Foundation, Wege Prize 2021 will again be open to any undergraduate or graduate student in the world and will be focused on developing a circular economy.

Team registration will open in August 2020, but interested faculty, students and professionals are encouraged to begin making connections, building teams, and generating ideas now.

More details about Wege Prize 2021 will be revealed in the coming weeks on wegeprize.org.

About Wege Prize:
Wege Prize, a West Michigan-born concept developed by Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University’s (KCAD’s) Wege Center for Sustainable Design with the support of The Wege Foundation, is an annual competition that ignites games-changing solutions for the future by inspiring college students around the world to collaborate across institutional, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries and redesign the way economies work. To learn more, go to wegeprize.org.

About KCAD:
Located in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids, Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (KCAD) is committed to creating lasting impact in West Michigan and beyond through collaborative partnerships, cultural innovation, and an educational model that prepares students for leadership in the visual arts, design, art history, and art education; provides innovative, collaborative education that fosters intellectual growth and individual creativity; and promotes the ethical and civic responsibilities of artists and designers, locally and globally. For more information, please visit kcad.edu.

About the Wege Foundation:
Planting seeds that develop leaders in economicology, health, education, and arts, and enhance the lives of people in West Michigan and around the world. For more information, please visit wegefoundation.com.

 

 

 

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Wege Speaker Series Lecture of April 23 is cancelled.

Dear Wege Speaker friends,

COVID-19 (coronavirus) continues to present challenges to organizations and communities across the country, and we are all beginning to feel its effects.

In accordance with Governor Whitmer’s latest recommendations and our own desire to limited any potential future impact of COVID-19, we are canceling this year’s Wege Speaker lecture with Favianna Rodriguez scheduled for April 23 at the Aquinas College Performing Arts Center.

While you’re sequestering, you may wish to view some of Favianna’s past interviews and presentations at https://www.favianna.com/media/videos.

We hope that wherever you are, you and your loved ones are taking care of each other and staying as safe and healthy as possible in these turbulent times.

   

Blandford Nature Center
Grand Rapids Public Schools
Grandville Avenue Arts & Humanities
Latina Network of West Michigan
LINC UP
Sierra Club Michigan Chapter
West Michigan Center for Arts + Technology
West Michigan Environmental Action Council

Kids’ Food Basket: Growing Direct Food Access and Urban Agriculture in Grand Rapids

Written content by Amanda St. Pierre • Videographer/photographer by Bryan Esler.

The Wege Foundation was pleased to support the construction of the new Kids’ Food Basket headquarters and its sustainable urban farm program.

Kids’ Food Basket was founded in 2002. Each weekday throughout the school year and summer, the organization provides equitable access to a healthy, balanced evening meal, called a sack supper, to local elementary children (ages 3-12) who live in food-insecure households. They currently serve 8,600 children across four counties in West Michigan.

The organization’s new headquarters and urban farm is located on Plymouth Avenue near Leonard Street on Grand Rapids’ northeast side.

Each day during the growing season, student groups and volunteers from the area come to the 10-acre chemical-free, sustainably-grown farm to learn about cultivating, harvesting, and providing fresh fruits and vegetables for our community.

Developing Urban Agriculture in Grand Rapids

Kids’ Food Basket’s urban farm and brand new LEED-designed headquarters was only a dream four years ago. As the organization began to consider how to best deliver on its mission to nourish children to reach their full potential, they began looking around the country to see what other organizations were doing.

“We learned that the most successful organizations were combining direct access to food, like our sack supper program, with education. We need to teach kids where food comes from and how to make life-long healthy food choices. We decided that this is how we would continue to grow,” said Bridget Clark Whitney, Founding CEO of Kids’ Food Basket.

Up until this point, Kids’ Food Basket had rented its facility. In the organization’s 17-year history, it had moved five times to accommodate growth in response to community needs.

They saw an opportunity to change this with the property at Plymouth and Leonard—the last remaining farmland in the City of Grand Rapids. After being farmed for over 100 years, the lot was vacant and for sale. In addition to land for farming, space was also available for a new Kids’ Food Basket headquarters. It was serendipitous.

“We embarked on our Feeding Our Future Campaign three years ago. The Wege Foundation’s grant was the first gift to this campaign. They stepped up and said we believe in what you are doing, and we want to get behind you,” said Afton DeVos, Kids’ Food Basket Chief Operating Officer.

In its first full growing season, Kids’ Food Basket served 87,000 servings of fresh fruit and vegetables from the farm. Another five tons were donated to local nonprofits, including Feeding America. Totals from 2019’s harvest are still being calculated as the farm continues to produce.

Growing Environmental Sustainability

“We know that kids are born with a sense of wonder and an affinity for nature. If properly cultivated, those values can mature into ecological literacy and ultimately into sustainable patterns of living,” Bridget said. “We’re so grateful for the leadership of the Wege Foundation in this space. From them, we’ve learned about environmental sustainability and the kind of organization we want to be. They’ve made us better.”

Sunflowers on the farm are great for the bees and other pollinators. They will eventually breakdown to add organic matter and nutrients to the soil. They also make great gifts for Kids’ Food Basket friends.
Troy Vos, Kids’ Food Basket Youth Engagement Manager with students from Allendale Middle School

International Student Design Competition’s Largest Field To-Date Reflects a World Ready to Work Together for a Better Future

Wege Prize 2020 draws field representing 24 countries, 64 academic institutions, and 100 academic disciplines; inspires student teams to collaborate across boundaries and help accelerate the global transition to a circular economy

Grand Rapids, Mich. November 22, 2019 – Everywhere we look, the dominant narrative seems to be one of divisiveness and polarization. But, one group of college and university students from around the globe is proof positive that the spirit of collaboration is alive and well.

They’re the latest crop of young leaders drawn to Wege Prize (wegeprize.org), an international student design competition that inspires collaboration across institutional, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries to solve persistent real-world problems and rethink the way economies work. Wege Prize 2020 has drawn a field of 29 teams of five, each required to represent different academic institutions and disciplines. These 145 students represent 24 countries, 64 academic institutions, and 100 unique academic disciplines—the largest and most diverse field in the competition’s seven-year history. See a complete breakdown of 2020 teams.

Each team has identified a complex, systemic problem (also known as a “wicked” problem) they’re interested in addressing, and has begun building a foundation of research to identify where the best opportunities for intervention exist. Over the next six months, they’ll grow that research into a product, service, business, nonprofit organization, or other solution that solves the problem through the lens of the circular economy, a rapidly emerging economic model that emphasizes designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems.

Along the way, teams are guided by feedback from Wege Prize Judges, a diverse and accomplished group of professionals whose collective expertise spans the circular economy, sustainable business, green chemistry, industrial design, UX/UI design, digital fabrication, biomimicry, public policy, education, and more. In addition to this intellectual and professional growth, teams have the opportunity to win a share of over $30,000 USD in total cash prizes to help move their project forward.

“Wege Prize is a space where education meets action,” says Gayle DeBruyn, a professor of Collaborative Design at Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (KCAD), which organizes the competition with the support of The Wege Foundation. “We’re empowering young people to actively learn how to approach problems from multiple perspectives and how to solve them by collaborating with others whose expertise and experiences differ from their own, but we’re also giving them support and resources to understand how they can make their ideas a reality.”

Past Wege Prize winners have developed a sustainable, circular online tourism platform for indigenous communities in Mexico, designed a system to convert harmful waste byproducts from cocoa bean farming into powerful and affordable organic fertilizers, and created an on-site waste treatment system for hospitals that minimizes environmental impact while maximizing the potential for resource recovery, among many other innovative solutions.

Wege Prize 2020 teams are tackling a wide variety of issues, from reducing dependence on single-use plastic by turning an abundant invasive water weed into bioplastic, to using big data to help homeless individuals in Brazil make a positive transition back into society, to reimagining Detroit as a city of the future through an influx of sustainable infrastructure, and much, much more.

As the competition progresses through its four distinct phases, those teams whose ideas inspire the greatest hope for real-world success will advance, while others will carry the constructive feedback they’ve received from the judges into their future problem-solving efforts, and more broadly, their personal and professional lives.

Follow along with Wege Prize 2020 on Facebook (@wegeprize)Twitter (@wegeprize), and at wegeprize.org, where competition updates are posted regularly.

About Wege Prize:
Wege Prize, organized by Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University’s (KCAD’s) Wege Center for Sustainable Design with the support of The Wege Foundation, is an annual competition that ignites game-changing solutions for the future by inspiring college/university students around the world to collaborate across institutional, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries to redesign the way economies work. To learn more, go to wegeprize.org.

About The Wege Foundation:
Planting seeds that develop leaders in economicology, health, education, and arts, and enhance the lives of people in West Michigan and around the world. For more information, please visit wegefoundation.org.

About KCAD:
As a college within Ferris State University, Kendall College of Art and Design prepares students for leadership in the visual arts, design, art history, and art education; provides innovative, collaborative education that fosters intellectual growth and individual creativity; and promotes the ethical and civic responsibilities of artists and designers, locally and globally. For more information, please visit kcad.edu.

 

WMCAT – Trout Unlimited and the Rogue River Watershed

Trout Unlimited is a cold water conservation organization that works on a national level conserving and protecting cold water fisheries and watersheds around the country. The
organization partnered with Rockford Public Schools in 2016 and the surrounding communities to analyze the rivers and test the waters to see how it affects the Rogue River watershed.

Trout Unlimited worked specifically with Parkside Elementary and their students to install a rain garden. During the process the kids were able to research rain gardens and learn how they can help divert water from storm drains that feed into the Rogue River. The students put an action plan together and presented their findings and suggestions to the school board for approval to start the creation of the rain garden.

The rain garden at Parkside Elementary is still up and running and consists of native plants from the area. Students of all ages participate by helping to keep it clean and to weed it, as needed.

Students who attended Parkside Elementary and participated in the project said that it was very beneficial and a completely new experience for them. The project also helped them realize the difference it was making on the Great Lakes as well as the rivers around them. Tara Dzirbowis, a teacher at Parkside Elementary explained, “It gives the kids a real world experience in doing the research and informs them on how projects like these can help the rivers and the community.”

The rain garden project has had a huge impact on the community and the students involved by informing them about rain gardens and giving them insight on what they can do to
help their rivers. Trout Unlimited has also worked on other projects throughout the community by turning areas that used to be lawns near storm drains into an area where native plants can grow.

Nichol Demol, who is a part of Trout Unlimited shared, “Over the course of nine years we have been spreading the word about stormwater practices in Rockford and have seen how it has affected the local government’s way of seeing the river and its tributaries.” Nichol encourages those interested in helping conserve local watersheds or streams to research watershed organizations in their local communities. Many offer various volunteering opportunities such as spring and fall stream clean-ups, and ways to invest in protecting local streams and rivers.

Trout Unlimited Project Student Names 

  • Article by Arieal Jackson
  • Photography by Dagan McClure-Sikkema
  • Videography and editing by Tris Cunningham, Micah Garmon, Arieal Jackson, Elias Vandyke-Titus, and Mike Saunders