The 2023 Love Your Wellies competition is underway, providing primary and secondary school students with the chance to win €1,000 for their schools as well as cash prizes for themselves.

Organised by Farm Payments for Ecological and Agricultural Transitions (FarmPEAT), the competition aims to raise awareness of the importance of peat landscapes and be inclusive of all students' interests and skills.

The competition is open to children of any age in primary and secondary school. However, FarmPEAT said that all entries must include the class bracket that they are a part of:

The closing date for entries is Friday, April 14, 2023, and the public vote will take place from Monday, May 8, until Friday, June 2.

The winners will be announced on Friday, June 9, with a formal awards ceremony taking place on Saturday, June 24.

The prize for first place is €250/student (max €1,000 if group entry), €150/student for second place (max €600 if group entry) and €100/student for third place (max €400 if group entry).

There will only be one cash prize per student, with any remaining prizes going to the school if the winning entry has less than four students.

Alongside each of the top three winners, their respective schools will also receive a sum of money:

The entry process to the Love Your Wellies competition requires entrants to choose a theme, choose a style and tell their story.

There are four themes to choose from with a suggested set of sub-themes and all themes must relate to the peat landscape.

The themes are:

The themes must then be formatted in one of four ways. These include model, literacy, artistic and digital.

Competition organisers said the formats are intentionally broad to allow for a fair and balanced judging and selection.

FarmPEAT said the judging panel will consist of community champions, project team members, affiliated project team members and community group representatives.

The scoring process will be carried out based on the quality of the submission, the write-up, the relation it has to the peat landscape and the overall completeness of the project.

10 entries selected by the panel will be published on all FarmPEAT social media sites and will then proceed to a public vote.

The public vote will be open for a total of four weeks and will take place on social media platforms Facebook and Twitter.

The public vote (50%) and the judges' votes (50%) will be combined to select the overall winners.