ClimaCore is a student-centered climate action app built for SDG 13, combining a school community feed, a GPS-driven mission game, and a real-time climate awareness hub. It won 1st place at the 15th e-ICON World Contest among 161 projects from 37 countries, with the award received from the Minister of Education of South Korea.
Youth climate concern is high — 90.8% of surveyed students said they worried about climate change — but participation in collective action stays low. The blockers were consistent: lack of time, inconvenience, low engagement, and information scattered across apps and news sites. Research showed the effort of finding and organising climate action was greater than the effort of doing it.
ClimaCore removes that friction by putting community action, gamified missions, and climate learning into one app on the device students already use. The three modules stack deliberately: ClimaSight builds literacy, ClimaGame converts it into repeated physical action, and ClimaConnect turns individual habits into school level momentum with a shared leaderboard.
A school-based social layer. Students join their school community and post climate actions to a feed with likes and comments, while community leaders organise cleanups, plantations, workshops, and seminars with dates, locations, and point values attached.
Students join an activity with one tap and leaders confirm attendance afterwards to release green points, which replaces searching for climate action with simply joining it.
Ecores spawn at random real-world locations. Students physically travel to them and unlock five climate missions each — lights off, unplugging devices, meatless meals, AC temperature — with tips and point values designed to build lasting habits.
Multiple schools compete for the same ecore over a two-month season. Whoever completes the most missions captures it, ties break on who finished last, and the winning team splits the combined points while others keep what they earned.
Three missions per student per day, photo verification on every submission, and a cooldown after capture so an ecore cannot be immediately retaken. Points feed both personal profiles and a live school leaderboard.
Topic quizzes on carbon footprint, causes, renewables, and SDG 13; a live disaster feed of floods, landslides, typhoons, and wildfires; real displacement case accounts; and ClimaAI with Learn, Ask, Act, and Idea modes.
Awareness campaigns rarely change behaviour because they end at information. Tying points to physically verified actions, and tying those points to a school competition, shifts climate action from passive concern into a habit with social stakes attached.