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Nikon has been co-sponsoring the International Children's Painting Competition on the Environment for children around the world with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Japan-based Foundation for Global Peace and Environment (FGPE), and Bayer AG.
Since 1991, the competition has called upon children aged 6 to 15 to "send a message around the world to conserve earth through posters", and has received over 2,600,000 entries from over 100 countries.
Nikon thinks that fostering environmental conservation awareness among children who are going to be our future is an important subject in order to preserve the precious earth for future generations.
Paintings created by children around the world convey serious events that are happening in the world and some of them include ideas for changing the status quo. They all include a strong message to conserve the earth. Nikon will continue to co-sponsor this competition and hopes that children will have the opportunity to think about their environment more deeply through painting. Nikon also expects that many people will pay more attention to their environment through the messages in the children's paintings.
Every year, the competition asks for children's paintings from across the world until autumn, on the theme of conservation of the global environment. After going through screenings held in six regions including Europe, Africa, North America, Asia Pacific, West Asia and Latin America/Caribbean, prize winners are determined in the next year's global screening meeting. The awards ceremony is held on World Environment Day every year. Winners and their families are invited and all prize-winning paintings are displayed.
After the awards ceremony, these paintings are shown in exhibitions and printed as postcards and calendars around the world to appeal to as many people as possible about the importance of conserving the beautiful and peaceful earth.
Paintings are kept at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto, forever as precious materials.
Prize winners (and Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP, back row fourth from right)
The theme for the 18th competition was ″Climate Change: Our Challenge.″ More than 2.4 million entries around the world were received, with 750 paintings selected through a global screening. Sixty-four prize winners were chosen, including grand prize recipient Ms. Ludmila Balovneva, a nine-year-old Russian girl.
The winners were announced at UNEP's Tunza International Children and Youth Conference in Daejeon, Republic of Korea, on August 20, 2009. The award ceremony was held with Prime Minister Han Seung-soo in attendance. Prize money, plaques and Nikon digital cameras as additional prizes were presented to the seven prize winners by Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP and Republic of Korea Environment Minister Lee Maan-ee.
Grand prize winner Ms. Ludmila Balovneva, a nine-year-old girl from Russia
Paint for the Planet, a campaign against global warming, was launched by UNEP on United Nations Day in October 2008. Nikon is a co-sponsor. Prizewinning paintings from the competition are used to promote the campaign.
Paint for the Planet is part of the "Unite to Combat Climate Change" campaign for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). The conference is very important, and new post-Kyoto Protocol reduction targets and framework (from 2013) will be determined there. Paint for the Planet exhibits prize-winning paintings from the competition (including previous ones) at major environmental conferences and events around the world, with the aim that the paintings will deliver children's messages about preventing global warming to the public.
Children's paintings displayed in the courtyard at the United Nations headquarter
Exhibit at the United Nations headquarters
Children who put their paintings up for auction
Auctions of prizewinning paintings were also held at the exhibit at the United Nations headquarters in New York, raising over 20,000 dollars. The money will be used through UNICEF to assist children affected by disasters caused by climate change.