At the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference, in Nice, Prada Group and UNESCO announced the launch of the Sea Beyond - Multi-Partner Trust Fund for Connecting People and Ocean. Starting with a contribution of €2 million by Prada, the Sea Beyond Multi-Partner Trust Fund will mobilize financial resources from a variety of partners to restore the relationship between humankind and the ocean, in line with one of the objectives of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, coordinated by UNESCO.

The agreement was signed at the UNESCO pavilion, “Beyond Borders: Ocean Futures”, hosted at La Baleine, Nice's Palexpo, by Ms. Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director-General, and Mr. Lorenzo Bertelli, head of Corporate Social Responsibility of the Prada Group and executive director, patron of the Ocean Decade Alliance.

The Fund will be the first of its kind to support projects that integrate ocean science, culture, and education in a synergistic and coherent manner, backing initiatives in five priority areas:
1. Blue Education: to empower students with the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, by including ocean literacy in school curricula;
2. Youth Empowerment and Engagement: to provide opportunities for youth and early career professionals to improve their knowledge and skills and contribute effectively to ocean discussions at multiple scales;
3. Ocean Culture and Heritage: to improve recognition of the critical role of cultural connections between humankind and the ocean in tackling global challenges and promoting sustainable development;
4. Science-Policy-Society Interface: to promote adequate representation of societal needs in policy-making processes;
5. Strategic Communication and Narrative Shifting: to build skills for developing and delivering targeted messages or actions focused on challenges faced by the ocean, sustainable responses and actionable solutions.

The Fund will be supported by a Scientific Committee, consisting of well-known representatives of the scientific community in different fields of ocean science and ocean literacy, that will provide expert advice on the most relevant themes to be included in the calls for project funding proposals.

Projects eligible for financial support will be selected through calls for proposals with the support of the Scientific Committee. The Fund’s Executive Committee, its governance body, will take decisions by consensus.

The establishment of the Fund, which will welcome new partners from January 2026, will increase coherence and reduce fragmentation among projects, offering a structured and systematic approach to financing. It will create synergies to improve cooperation among stakeholders from different sectors, being a crossover between institutions, private companies, academia, NGOs, educators, and the scientific community at large.

“We must protect the ocean and rethink our relationship with it, and this change starts in the classroom. Through our Sea Beyond programme, UNESCO and Prada are empowering a new generation to better understand and protect the ocean. This programme will fund youth-led initiatives on every continent, enhancing ocean education and culture,” commented Ms. Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO director-general.

“The ultimate goal of the Fund is to reunite new partners who share Sea Beyond values and mission, and together create an even larger movement for ocean preservation and education, building on what the Prada Group and UNESCO have achieved since 2019," said Lorenzo Bertelli. "Through the Fund, we aim not only to design impactful projects, but to scale them by embedding ocean literacy into global culture and policy. This is a long-term commitment, because every child empowered through ocean literacy brings us one step closer to a more sustainable and conscious future.”

The Fund is now established with a duration of five years.