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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 190,000 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.
Screening meeting mainly organized by Nikon
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 National Museum of Ethnology, Suita-shi, Osaka, forever as precious materials.
Awards ceremony held at Te Papa Tongarewa, a national museum in Wellington, New Zealand.
The theme for the 17th competition was "Climate Change : Actions We Can Take Now", and 700 paintings were selected for the global screening meeting from more than 15,000 entries around the world. Sixty-four prize winners, including the grand prize winner in the global category Ms. Gloria IP Tung (14 years old), were determined.
The awards ceremony was held in New Zealand on June 5, 2008, World Environment Day. Plaques, prize money and Nikon digital cameras were presented to the winners.
Winners' paintings and the awards event can be seen on UNEP's website:
Center: Grand prize winner, Ms. Gloria IP Tung, a 14-year-old Chinese girl.
Left: UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner
Right: New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark
Grand prize winners' paintings in the global category
