It's All About Resilience
FishTank 2026 Sustainability Design Challenge invites students to envision how Hawaiʻi can be safer, stronger, and better able to withstand its unique vulnerabilities.
Registration for the 6th annual NexTech Hawai'i FishTank Sustainability Design Challenge opened on November 15. Hawai'i Island students in grades 5 through 8 will team up to participate in an 8-week problem-solving challenge. The goal is to develop real-world solutions to today's and tomorrow's sustainability challenges.
The registration deadline is December 28. For details and the Registration Form, click here.
This Season's Theme is Resilience!
Our island communities depend on strong, interconnected, and resilient systems. This means everything from the infrastructure that keeps our roads, waterways, energy, and information flowing, to the cultural foundations that shape our identity, values, and sense of place.
Resilience also means supporting the social well-being of our ʻohana through safe communities, housing, health, and recreation. Just as critically, resilience requires caring for our natural environment; taking action with respect and malama for our ahupuaʻa systems, climate, land use, native ecosystems, and biodiversity.
This year, FishTank teams will design innovative solutions that strengthen one or more pillars of resilience, helping build a more sustainable and thriving Hawaiʻi for future generations.
"E hahai i ke ala o ka hana pa'akikī. ‘Loa'a ka lanakila no ka hana pa'akikī."
Resilience Areas
Infrastructure - access to emergency services, energy, information & economy
Culture - place values, identity & place-making
Social - safety, housing, wellness & recreation
Natural Environment - ahupuaʻa, climate, land use & natural resources, indigenous ecosystems & biodiversity
Students are challenged to explore these themes and take a closer look at the areas of interest and related issues. In addition, the teams will be encouraged to find inspiration from real-life local case studies in resilience programs. Such as:
Revitalize Puna initiatives and how they addressed different aspects of the 2018 Kilauea eruption recovery efforts.
Vibrant Hawai'i and its ongoing effort to expand an island-wide network of Resilience Hubs to foster resilience through community, workforce, and economic development.
How Kaʻū youth are leading the Zero Waste Movement by working with Malama ʻĀina Compostables at Recycle Hawai'i.
How the Kaʻū Global Learning Lab is creating resilience models for Hawai'i and the world.
How to become part of the next generation of leaders and take action through Hawai'i County's ʻŌpio Resilience Capacity Area.
"The challenge is real, but the opportunity is immense." ~Hawaii Community Foundation, Hawai'i Resilience Fund
A fun and inspiring learning experience!
For students who want to make a difference, the FishTank Sustainability Design Challenge is an empowering and transformational experience. Beyond learning how to apply Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) skills to solve real-world problems, the students will gain first-hand experience in leadership, team building, and personal development. It's also an opportunity to earn scholarship awards and cash prizes.
Each team gives itself a name and selects its own Team Coordinator. Team Coordinators are typically a parent or family member, a teacher, or another adult advisor, committed to mentoring and coaching students during the competition.
Competing student teams have access to resources, workshops, and learning materials to guide them at each stage of the 8-week FishTank challenge. From start to finish, the students and team leaders will work with helpers from NexTech Hawai'i and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).
The SMEs play a vital role in the learning experience. SMEs are volunteers who may be educators, business and community leaders, family members, Hawaiian cultural practitioners, and other mentors. Teams are empowered to identify and reach out to their own SMEs. For grade school students, this is likely the first time they will approach adults outside their home and school environment to request information and assistance. By contacting prospective SMEs, students will learn about community engagement, professional networking, and how to build business connections that can last a lifetime.
To win the FishTank challenge, workable solutions must take a multifaceted, integrated approach to improving resilience across the islands.
Working with their Team Coordinators and SMEs, students select a specific problem or issue in resiliency, ranging from large-scale disaster recovery and relief efforts to adaptability in community, socio-economic, or public service programs.
Students are provided with an Engineering Notebook to collaborate on their ideas, track their work, and submit progress reports. Also, the teams can each submit a budget to apply for a "min-grant" of up to $250 that covers expenses to support the development of their solution, purchase supplies, and materials.
The Success Factory has facilitated the FishTank Sustainability Design Challenge since 2020 as part of NextTech's mission to promote Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math education for Hawai'i's youth. FishTank provides community-minded students with real-world opportunities to develop innovative approaches to advancing sustainability in the Hawaiian Islands toward a more resilient future.
Fish Food for Thought
Participating students in the FishTank Sustainability Design Challenge are given tools and instructional materials as part of this hands-on learning experience. This includes exercises in teamwork, technical workshops in design and engineering, leadership, and entrepreneurial skills development.
Over the course of the two-month competition, students set goals and meet required milestones. Teams will participate in Skills Workshops and Live Classroom Q&A, Technical Training, coaching on Leadership Styles and Presentation Skills, and more.
FishTank teams have access to an online "Fish Food" site that provides a variety of resources, including details on Problem Categories, an outline of steps and milestones along the way, schedules and deliverables, and files with all the learning materials, videos and documents, and recordings of Information Workshops.
The 7-Step Engineering Design Process
This year's competition starts with a Launch Day virtual workshop on January 10. To help prepare for Launch Day, students will have received a Welcome Package that includes an Engineering Notebook, worksheet, and toolkit, plus an outline of the 7-step FishTank Engineering Design Process (EDP).
The EDP is a creative method used by professional engineers to solve all kinds of problems. FishTank's version is a 7-step process that helps young students stay organized and focused, and shows them how to break a big problem down into smaller, more manageable steps to craft a solution.
Understand the issues. Review research materials on the "Fish Food" resource site and discuss Resilience issues to help each team identify a specific problem to focus on.
Define problem statement. Seek out and connect with three or more Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to learn more and help define the problem.
Brainstorm solutions. Students must think like engineers and collaborate with their team coordinator and SMEs to come up with possible solutions and select an idea for development.
Design & model. Each team must design its solution, envision how it works, and prepare to demonstrate how it solves its chosen problem.
Test & evaluate. The EDP is an iterative, non-linear process. As students test and refine a solution, they may realize they need to return to the Brainstorming stage.
Modify & improve. Teams implement necessary changes and continue to test and evaluate their solution.
Present the solution. FishTank students must also think like entrepreneurs and create a compelling, cost-conscious business case proposal for the competition judges
The FishTank competition is modeled on the Shark Tank TV show, so it's a valuable opportunity for students to develop public speaking and business presentation skills.
"Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems." - Gever Tulley
Think Globally. Act Locally.
Students are encouraged to think big and look beyond our ʻāina. For example, how can we make our cities safer and more resilient? How can society overcome natural disasters? Survive the next pandemic? Recover from economic depression? How can we take better care of the planet and people from keiki to kupuna? Both here in Hawai'i and around the world?
Each idea for achieving greater resilience through science and technology innovation can make a positive impact on our Island Earth.
The Launch Day virtual workshop on January 10 will explore ideas and Resiliency issues, possible solutions, and resources designed to inspire.
Between January 24 and 30, students will participate in a number of team check-ins for coaching and training sessions via Zoom. This will help keep everyone on track as participating teams progress through the Engineering Design Process and meet the competition's project proposal deadline on February 1.
A second virtual workshop on February 7 will dive into innovation, technical instruction, and problem-solving. The final workshop on February 28 begins the discussion of how to prepare presentation materials and incorporate storytelling.
This year's final materials deadline is March 8. This is when students must submit their presentation materials, including their Engineering Notebooks, presentation slide deck and pre-recorded video presentation, plus a "lightning pitch" of five minutes or less. The NexTech evaluation committee will review each team's materials and select the top five teams as finalists in the competition.
FishTank coaches will help each of the finalist teams to fine-tune their presentation with attention to details like speaking flow and tone, stage presence, and creating visual aids.
FishTank teams will showcase their work at the in-person Pitch Day event on March 28. The five finalists will take the stage to present their solutions to a panel of judges as well as a live audience of their families and educators, local leaders in business, government, and academia.
In addition to assessing final pitches, the judges will review the participants' engineering notebooks, reports, and recorded presentations to select both team and individual award winners.
NexTech Hawai'i is committed to advancing STEM education.
Encouraging Hawai'i Island's young people to build a more sustainable future is central to every FishTank competition. It takes a village of teachers, parents, and community leaders who all contribute to the success of the FishTank students.
NexTech Hawai'i relies on the generosity of many professional partnerships and community relationships to source volunteers and mentor support. All of our extra-curricular camps and competitions are designed to inspire creative, collaborative, real-world problem-solving through STEM.
Our mission is to inspire and build STEM career readiness in Hawaii's K-12 youth through our NexTech community education programs and networks.
Join us!
Contact us if you'd like to volunteer as an SME for virtual workshops or to contribute resilience-related content to the Fish Food resource site. The students' success is largely a result of community volunteers like YOU who have been so beneficial just by being open to talking with the student teams.
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Share your thoughts about Resilience in Hawai'i and root for your favorite FishTank team on the NexTech Facebook page.
