Help Save the Med

Inspiring the public through credible reporting, while empowering youth to take action!

We are seeking kickstart funding to launch the initial development of the Help Save The Med and WIKI’s Centennial Expedition, a three-year multimedia initiative (writing, filming, photographing, cartooning…) designed to inform and engage the public.

With a strong youth focus, our goal is to highlight the threats, particularly climate change, facing the Greater Mediterranean, but also to share possible scientific, community and technological solutions. Headed up by Paris-based Emmy award-winning filmmaker Tom Woods and foreign correspondent and author Edward Girardet in Geneva, our mission is to serve as mentors to young people and promote innovative approaches that will make a difference and protect one of the planet’s most precious resources.

Our five-point Action Plan aims to inform and inspire to save the Med and the world’s oceans. This includes:

1. Confronting climate change with scientific and community-based initiatives
2. Harnessing the power of independent media, credible storytelling and youth empowerment to effect meaningful change
3. Halting environmental pollution, especially plastics
4. Promoting sailors’ active engagement and yachting with a purpose
5. Supporting circular economies, the arts and sustainable tourism to preserve local traditions, cultural heritage and pristine ecosystems

People need to be properly informed in order to act. By deploying quality journalism and education, we are using creative storytelling to show how diverse threats are impacting the region: global warming, plastics pollution, environmental degradation, disappearing wetlands, overfishing, forest fires, and the plight of refugees and migrants…We also seek to highlight positive approaches such as rewilding, innovative technologies, sustainable tourism, community engagement, youth empowerment, and imaginative entrepreneurial initiatives.

Our youth component is crucial. Our highly experienced journalists, photographers and filmmakers will serve as mentors through hands-on reporting and communications boot camps. Open to high school and college students but also young professionals, it is imperative to involve the new generation as it is the future of their planet at stake.

Our project flagship is WIKI, a 102-year-old classic wooden sailing ketch, which will serve as the expedition’s production hub and symbol as we journey to all 22 countries of the Mediterranean Basin. This will enable our teams to explain how the ’Great Sea’ has evolved over the past century, but also to understand what may transpire over the next hundred years.

As a non-profit endeavour, all our content - articles, creative writing, photos, videos - will be made available free in the public interest to participating media and institutions, such as UN agencies, international organizations, concerned companies and NGOs. Our goal is to collaborate with scientists, entrepreneurs and media professionals to help produce content readily understood by everyone.

Informing the general public about the state of the world's oceans is vital. But so is the urgent need to do something about it.

Our goal is to make people aware. This includes populations who live and work in the Greater Mediterranean but also from Europe and the rest of the world who visit for tourism, business or study.

Our stories will shed light on key issues. We will also profile those bringing about positive change. We are specifically looking for solutions that can be replicated worldwide.

But we’re not just about doom and gloom. We will focus on the quality of life in the Mediterranean, whether through the arts, literature, music, cuisine, outdoors, sports and, of course, sailing. The Mediterranean is a treasure to be preserved - and enjoyed!

Your funding is imperative to jump-start this project, but our funding drive will continue.

The Help Save The Med WIKI expedition - a partner project of the Swiss-based non-profit Global Geneva Group (GGG) - is a three-year iniative, but which needs to be developed properly over the next few months. (Overall, we’re seeking 380,000 CHF development funding for 2023). Kickstart funding will support the following components:

1. Developing a short promotional video.

2. A one-day youth workshop highlighting the state of the Mediterranean and the world’s oceans for Swiss and international high school students.

3. Preparing a pilot five-day Mediterranean journalism ’boot camp’ for young people in Marseille in late summer, 2023. Participants will produce their own reports, whether written stories, short films, photographic essays or even cartoons and graphic design. Up to 10 spots will be available free-of-charge to participants from the global south. The «best of» content produced will be published in Global Insights magazine as well as participating partner media.

4. The publishing of a 76-pp Special Mediterranean and Oceans issue (print/e-edition) of Global Insights with articles, photography, cartoons and other content aimed at non-specialist audiences by journalists, scientists, entrepreneurs, students and others. Complimentary copies to be distributed to high schools, colleges, museums, tourist offices, yacht clubs, and companies.

5. Developing our Help Save the Med website and other social media initiatives.

While our main language of operation is English, we hope to include French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and other languages once we are up and running. With eventual support from sponsors and foundations, our long-term goal is to produce a fully-fledged multi-media initiative with the potential of enormous impact on the way people view - and act - with regard to the Mediterranean.