SUNx Malta launches a global competition for young authors: Dodo4Kids wants to tell a story of climate-responsible travel in every country
SUNx Malta has launched a new international project that seeks to connect children’s literature, climate education, and sustainable tourism. It is a 12-month global search for young writers called “Dodo4Kids for Tomorrow’s World”, an initiative that invites authors from different countries to create locally rooted stories about climate challenges, nature, and more sustainable forms of travel. At the heart of the project is Dodo4Kids, SUNx Malta’s educational program aimed at the youngest audiences through stories, games, animations, and interactive content, and it is now expected to gain an even broader international dimension. According to the published information, the goal is for every country to receive its own version of the story in which the dodo becomes a guide through local landscapes, cultural sites, and challenges related to climate, sustainability, and nature conservation.
The competition comes at a time when tourism is increasingly being viewed not only as an economic sector, but also as a sector highly exposed to climate change. In official UN Tourism materials, it is emphasized that the tourism sector is simultaneously vulnerable to the consequences of climate change and itself contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, which is why the issue of adaptation and damage reduction can no longer be postponed. It is precisely at this point that SUNx Malta is trying to open a different approach: instead of keeping the climate discussion within expert circles, it wants to bring it closer to children and families, using the language of story, imagination, and local motifs that children can understand.
The dodo as a symbol of warning, but also a new sign of hope
The choice of the dodo is not accidental. For decades, this bird has been a global symbol of extinction and the consequences of humanity’s relationship with nature, and SUNx Malta is now trying to turn it into a kind of ambassador of climate literacy. On its official pages, the organization explains that Dodo4Kids is designed as an interactive program in which children learn about the world, travel, and protecting the planet through stories, challenges, and digital activities. In this way, the dodo is moved from a symbol of disappearance into the space of education and prevention: its story no longer serves only as a reminder of lost species, but also as a tool for talking about how to prevent new ecological losses.
Such symbolic reshaping is especially important in communication with children. Climate topics often appear in public discourse through figures about record temperatures, extreme weather events, damage to the economy, or political disputes over decarbonization. For an adult audience, these are legitimate and necessary frameworks, but for children they can be abstract or frightening. With this project, SUNx Malta is trying to avoid an approach based solely on fear. Instead, it offers a narrative in which children do not remain passive observers of the crisis, but become actors who learn through story to recognize the problem and imagine solutions.
This also reveals the broader communication logic of the project. Dodo4Kids is not being built as a classic campaign with a one-time message, but as an educational universe that expands through books, animated content, games, and localized versions of the story. On its official pages, SUNx states that the program already uses books and digital activities so that children can explore the world and adopt the basic ideas of climate-responsible travel, and among the existing examples it mentions stories from Malta, Uganda, and Ukraine. Media reports about the new competition add that there are also editions for Mauritius and Bali, pointing to the ambition of gradually expanding the content network across different geographical and cultural spaces.
How the competition for young authors is conceived
According to information published on March 31, 2026, SUNx Malta sees the competition as a 12-month global project in which participants are expected to write imaginative yet locally grounded stories about the dodo and the climate challenges of their own country. The idea is not to produce a generic ecological text that could be copied anywhere, but to create content that recognizes the particular features of each place: local landmarks, landscapes, natural or social problems familiar to children, as well as models of more sustainable behavior in tourism and everyday life.
In practical terms, authors are asked for a story framework in which the dodo travels through recognizable points of a specific country, meets children, and together with them solves puzzles related to climate, sustainability, and nature. Such a model shows that the project does not want to remain at a merely declarative level. The dodo is not conceived only as a mascot, but as a character who guides a child through a concrete space and a concrete problem. In one country this may be the issue of coastal pressure and heat waves, in another the loss of biodiversity, in a third the pressure on protected areas, waste, water, or the consequences of extreme weather events on tourism infrastructure.
According to the competition announcement, all entries should be aligned with the so-called Paris 1.5 approach, that is, with the logic of resilience, sustainable development, and “nature-positive” tourism that SUNx Malta promotes in its other programs as well. The publication motive is also important: the selected works are expected to become official Dodo4Kids e-books and digital educational content, and the authors of the winning entries would be listed as co-authors of the published works that would be distributed globally via Amazon. This gives the competition additional weight, because it does not remain at the level of symbolic recognition, but offers young authors the possibility for their work to enter real educational and publishing circulation.
What SUNx Malta actually wants to achieve
At the foundation of the entire project lies the concept of “Climate Friendly Travel”, which SUNx Malta defines as tourism aligned with climate goals, sustainable development, and nature protection. On its official pages, the organization states that it is a non-profit program created with the support of Malta’s Ministry of Tourism and the Malta Tourism Authority, with the ambition of contributing to the transformation of the tourism sector toward net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 on a pathway aligned with the Paris Agreement. In addition, it develops educational programs, stakeholder registers, and partnership networks, with a particular emphasis on the most vulnerable countries and small island states.
Within that framework, Dodo4Kids is not a secondary add-on, but part of the “Education2Action” strategy, that is, an effort to turn climate awareness into lasting learning and behavioral change. SUNx and its partners have repeatedly emphasized that today’s children and young people will not be only the audience of climate policies, but the generation that will live with the consequences of the decisions made today. For that reason, education is not reduced to learning a few ecological terms, but to an attempt to develop in children at an early stage a sense of connection between travel, nature, the economy, and personal responsibility.
This approach is also evident in the already existing partnerships. SUNx Malta recently announced cooperation with PATA, in which Dodo4Kids was presented as a tool for developing climate literacy among schoolchildren and families. In that announcement, it was emphasized that the partnership aims to build a generation of more aware and resilient travelers and that the climate crisis is already changing tourism destinations themselves. In another recent initiative, presented at ITB Berlin, SUNx Malta, IIPT, and the World Tourism Network announced that they would make Dodo4Kids electronically available in 450 IIPT Peace Parks around the world. This clearly positions the program as content that should not remain limited to one country or one campaign, but is instead trying to spread through international tourism and educational networks.
Why the focus on children is important right now
The issue of climate education for children in tourism may at first glance seem peripheral compared with debates about air transport, the energy transition of hotels, or emissions regulation. Nevertheless, that is precisely where the specificity of the project lies. While institutions and industry mainly discuss technical solutions, standards, reporting, and investments, SUNx Malta is trying to address the cultural and educational dimension of the problem. The starting point is simple: if today’s children will be tomorrow’s travelers, workers, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers, then the way they understand travel now can shape both market behavior and society’s expectations in the long term.
This is not without basis. In its materials, UN Tourism warns that tourism must accelerate climate action because it is both a cause and a victim of climate change. Rising temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns, water shortages, heat waves, fires, sea-level rise, and pressure on ecosystems directly affect destinations, seasonality, infrastructure, and travel safety. When such processes are viewed in the long term, it becomes clear that today’s children will grow up in a tourism world different from the one shaped by previous generations. In that sense, education is not a decorative activity, but preparation for real social and economic changes.
SUNx Malta consciously chooses a positive tone in this regard. Instead of the message that travel itself is problematic, the emphasis is placed on the idea that travel can be an opportunity for learning, responsibility, and a different relationship toward the destination. On the official Dodo4Kids pages, the program is described as a way for children to learn about the world through “real travel experiences”, earn badges, solve tasks, and take steps for the planet. Such an approach is aligned with recent educational trends in which knowledge is not transmitted only frontally, but through interaction, experience, and play. At the same time, it shows that SUNx wants to build “climate hope”, and not just a catalogue of warnings.
From a local story to a global content network
One of the most interesting elements of the new competition is the attempt to translate the global climate theme into local languages, motifs, and imaginaries. Many international campaigns suffer from the same problem: they are formulated broadly enough to be globally acceptable, but because of that they often remain distant from the concrete reality of readers. The model now proposed by SUNx Malta starts from a different logic. At the center is not a universal brochure about sustainability, but a series of nationally or locally colored stories in which children can recognize their own space.
Such an approach could be especially important for countries that depend heavily on tourism or are climate-vulnerable. Small island societies, coastal countries, states with sensitive protected areas, or those in which tourism and natural heritage are strongly linked to local identity have an interest in ensuring that the climate issue does not remain only in administrative strategies. When children are told about climate change through a beach, park, city, or mountain familiar to them, the topic becomes more real and less abstract. That is exactly why the localization of the story is not merely an aesthetic addition, but a key pedagogical decision.
In addition, local versions of the story can also function as a tool of cultural visibility. If, as announced, the best works are to be turned into e-books and made available internationally, then each story can simultaneously speak about climate responsibility and represent the identity of a given country. In that sense, the project stands at an interesting intersection of children’s literature, cultural diplomacy, and sustainable tourism. Of course, the question remains open as to how broad the actual reach of this content will be and how the entries will be selected, edited, and translated, but the basic idea clearly shows that SUNx is thinking not only about education, but also about the global circulation of local stories.
Open questions and the real reach of the initiative
Although the concept is attractive, several questions remain open for now. According to currently available information, the project framework and its goal have been published, but the more detailed competition rules, selection criteria, participant age categories, and technical submission requirements are expected to be additionally presented during the broadcast of the SUNx Strong Earth Festival on April 29. This means that, for now, the public knows the basic ambition of the initiative, but not yet all the operational details that will determine how inclusive and accessible the competition will be in different countries.
A second important question concerns actual reach. In the sustainability sector, it is not uncommon for ideas to sound strong in the conceptual phase, but to have greater difficulty achieving tangible impact when they move into practice. In the case of Dodo4Kids, success will depend not only on the quality of the stories, but also on whether they are adopted by schools, tourist boards, hotels, local partners, and families. SUNx Malta is currently building infrastructure through its own platforms, partners, and registers, but only broader implementation will show whether the dodo can truly become a recognizable international symbol of climate-responsible travel among children.
A third question concerns the balance between education and promotion. As the project develops within the tourism sector, it will be important that stories about destinations do not slip into promotional postcards with ecological decoration, but retain real educational value and speak credibly about the problems places face. That balance will determine how serious a tool of climate literacy Dodo4Kids will be, and how much it will be merely a charming communication product. For now, according to publicly available descriptions, SUNx Malta emphasizes resilience, sustainability, and a “nature-positive” approach, which points to an intention to keep the content on a serious foundation.
The broader message of the project
Regardless of the open questions, the new search for young authors reveals something important about the way the language of the climate debate in tourism is changing. Instead of everything remaining within technical documents and industry declarations, there are more and more attempts to tell the story through culture, education, and storytelling. SUNx Malta is now going a step further and proposing that children should not be only the audience of finished content, but also its creators. This is perhaps the most interesting element of the initiative: climate awareness is not presented as something that adults pass down to young people from above, but as a space in which young people themselves can build the language of the future.
If the project succeeds in attracting high-quality authors from different countries and if those stories really do become a sustainable network of educational content, Dodo4Kids could grow into more than a charming mascot and a single competition. It could become an example of how a complex global topic such as the climate crisis can be translated into the language of children without trivialization, but also without paralyzing fear. At a time when tourism is increasingly facing climate pressures, such an attempt to tell the future to children through local stories, real places, and more responsible models of travel appears to be a carefully designed message that hope, by itself, has no meaning without knowledge, and that knowledge without imagination hardly reaches those who tomorrow will live with the consequences of today’s decisions.
Sources:- SUNx Malta / The SUN Program – official page of the Dodo4Kids program with a description of the concept, age group, books, animations, and educational approach (link)
- Dodo4Kids – official project page with an overview of the program and the interactive learning model through travel, stories, and challenges (link)
- SUNx Malta / The SUN Program – official announcement about the partnership with PATA and the role of Dodo4Kids in developing climate literacy among children and families (link)
- SUNx Malta / The SUN Program – official announcement about the availability of Dodo4Kids in IIPT Peace Parks and the international expansion of the program (link)
- Climate Friendly Travel – official page with a description of the SUNx Malta program, the support of Maltese institutions, and the goal of transforming the sector toward net zero emissions by 2050 (link)
- UN Tourism – official page on climate action in tourism and the vulnerability of the sector to climate change (link)
- eTurboNews – announcement from March 31, 2026, about the launch of the 12-month global search for young authors “Dodo4Kids for Tomorrow’s World”, the competition framework, and the announcement of additional information at the Strong Earth Festival (link)
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