9 days ago

HAPPY EARTH DAY, Invite to the Grand Finals & Our Finalist Announcement!!

Howdy CCM peeps,

HAPPY EARTH DAY (and for the One4Earth team, it's a "Happy B-Earth Day" as well, as today makes the org's one-year anniversary since our rebrand from the OATHE Project, more on that here)... Keep an eye out on socials for more, and hope everyone's having an awesome week so far!

Our organizing team has been busy bees behind the scenes, but wanted to reach out and pass along some updates. Now, some of these will not be news to most of y'all, as we've been keping our Slack channel (link here) very much up-to-date with the latest.. But for those who've missed it, here's some key notes:

THANK YOU to All Who Applied: This year had 280+ participants from 40+ countries, and a record 50+ submisisons too! It was difficult for our judges to narrow down our lists & are truly inspired by each and every one of you who applied, whether you made the finals or not. And regardless of where your project has placed, we encourage everyone to keep pursuing their ideas (or new ones using the knowledge you gained over the last few weeks), and have a geniune feeling that ALL of you are destined to make impact in your own incredible ways!
Feedback: All of the 8 finalist teams have been sent consolidated judge feedback to their emails, but please let us know if you have not received it. You are encouraged to use this feedback as you develop your pitches for the grand finals and/or iterate on the videos. For our other teams, if you would like feedback please let us know via e-mail or Slack, it is available but only by request.
Mentorship: Our organizing team is also offering pop-up mentorship for folks interested in some additional guidance, and/ or for those working on the certification program (per Shitangshu's note from yesterday, today's the last day to e-mail us if interested in the certificate). And for the mentorship, book times here if this interests, more times will be added until April 30th!
Public Choice Awards: All eligible teams can also participate in our public choice awards. Most teams opted in already when submitting their projects or via our team confirmation form. But if you have not opted in, and would still like to participate, please send us an email indicating so. We encourage all to share their work with the world, with the key thing here being that those opted in will have their project vids shared on our socials/ Instagram & have the public select their favourites in a hidden vote. More details on this to follow soon.
Grand Finals: We're also SO excited to announce that our GRAND FINALS is being held on Sunday, April 26th, 2026 @ 10 AM EDT = 2 MPM GMT = 7:30 PM IST... And here, the format was chosen after consulting with participants, featuring a final with 8 teams, who will be sharing their revised 5-min videos (OR a 5-min live pitch), while having 3 min of questions for our judges. And ALL of you are invited, calendar invite sent & a link also here: Climate Change-Makers Challenge 2026!!

And on this note.. Our FINALIST TEAMS are... DRUMROOLLLL... And in no particular order...

BioChar, Coire, Ecology Choice, My Little Flutter, NightBreath, Planet Heros, Prompt Footprint, Terraware!!

Check out their submissions + our other very cool projects in our now-published project gallery here. We genuinely are so excited for this, and cannot wait for what should be an amazing event.

And finally, from all of us here at CCM, we would like to extend our sincere thank you for taking a chance, doing the hard work to put together a project submission, and putting your best foot forward. So many of you have a passion for change and we are eager to see how each of you will make an impact on your own ways. For us organizers, this hackathon has been a blast & thank you all for taking part in different ways. We truly are so proud of each and every one of you for all of the passion and innovation you folks showed. Together we truly can make a difference for our Earth, one project at a time.

Many thanks & kind regards,

Jess & the CCM 2026 Organizing Team