United World Challenge

Program

The United World Challenge is an innovative nonprofit that completes extreme expeditions and shares the story live through multimedia channels to raise funds and spark action to solve the issues of our time. 

In the inaugural 2020 United World Challenge expedition, founder Tez Steinberg rowed a 23-foot boat 2,700 miles from California to Hawaii by himself. Together with his land-based team, he shared the story of his 71-day saga and inspired followers to donate $77,000 to scholarships for peace and sustainability. While at sea, he gathered data for microplastic research with partners at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and through the Challenge’s partnership with Ocean Bottle, helped fund the collection of 5,000 pounds of ocean-bound plastic. 

Now the United World Challenge team is preparing for the next expedition: a never-before-attempted journey that aims to secure 1 World Record and 3 World Firsts in adventure and science. The mission will be publicly announced in August, 2023. Companies interested in sponsorship opportunities to support the mission and gain visibility to the 33 million followers shared by the expedition’s partners are invited to contact Tez Steinberg. 

The Challenge is building several major initiatives upon the upcoming expedition:

• Education: Expand the Ocean Classroom Campaign – an open-source program to teach students marine science and coding – to schools in 18 countries.
• Research: Gather new, never-before-collected data for research at Scripps and fill key gaps in public datasets regarding microplastic migration.
• Action: Raise funds and action to help protect and restore oceans worldwide.

A 3-time Emmy-award winning team has come on board to produce a documentary about the upcoming journey. Stay tuned for announcements this summer. Your support for this mission will be deeply appreciated by our team, our partners, and people everywhere who share our mission to preserve the oceans.