Winners of the 2023-24 RISE Challenge Big Sky

• $1,000 Grand Prize Winner: Glacier High School | Project: Planting Natives to Reduce Riverbank Erosion

• Second Place - $800: Headwaters Academy | Project: Frozen Storage for Water Conservation

• Third Place - $525: Glacier High School | Project: Pulling Our Share, Program Expansion

• Fourth Place - $325: Columbia Falls Junior High | Project: Living Sustainably in Blizzards

• Fifth Place - $225: Ronan Middle School | Project: Wildfire Awareness Games

• Sixth Place - $125: Loyola Sacred Heart High School | Project: Wildfire Preparedness PR Campaign

What is the RISE Challenge Big Sky?

The mission of RISE Challenge Big Sky is to create a generation of citizens with the knowledge, skills, and motivation to improve community resilience to natural disasters.

The goals of RISE Challenge Big Sky are to:

1. Improve community engagement in developing resilience. When students participate in local problem-solving, their experience is durable. Young people who have experience making their community resilient are more likely to participate as adults and will be more aware of risks and be prepared for future events.

2. Improve student learning. When asked to solve problems facing their community, students leverage experience, harness internal resources, and apply these lessons to find and implement the best solution. Along the way, there is experimentation, failure, success, and ultimately consequences for actions. This method, where students drive their own learning, is the cornerstone of the deep understanding that young people need in order to thrive in a world driven by change.

How It Works

The RISE Challenge Big Sky is open to western Montana educators and students in grades 6 – 12 at no cost. Educators can lead the RISE Challenge alone or team up with colleagues for cross-curricular learning. Participants learn about the natural hazards impacting their communities, select an issue to focus on, conduct in-depth research, engage community stakeholders, define a strategy for addressing their natural hazard issue, and present it in an action plan proposal. Groups with the top proposals will be invited to present to a panel of expert judges at the summit for the chance to win prize money!

• All proposal entries are eligible to request funding for project implementation supplies.

• Awards will be presented to the top five (5) winning proposals, determined on summit day as a combined score of the written proposal and summit day presentation. Prizes range from $1,000 for 1st place to $300 for 5th place.

Why the RISE Challenge Big Sky?

• Transforms classrooms by grounding learning in issues students care about to transform classrooms into vibrant learning communities.

• Deepens learning by asking students to leverage experience, harness internal and external resources, develop a plan, and implement that plan in their community.

• Builds problem-solving skills by giving students hands-on experience designing and implementing a project in their community.

• Develops citizenship and important youth-adult relationships by supporting students as they engage with community stakeholders to solve a local problem.

• Develops skills in resilience as well as creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication – the foundation for 21st-century learning.

Want more information on the RISE Challenge Big Sky for your school?