Interventions aimed at influencing adolescent behaviour often fall short due to their failure to align with adolescents' fundamental need to be acknowledged, heard, and respected. Digital interventions are often perceived as condescending, resulting in attrition. Additionally, most existing interventions target only the symptoms or behaviours of adolescents, overlooking the significant role of factors such as identity and social environment play in adolescent development. Given the pivotal role of peer relationships during adolescence, empowering young people as agents of change can enhance their mental health and wellbeing (MHWB) and have ripple effects on the wellbeing of peer communities. This proposal builds on the foundation laid by the Engajadamente Project (www.engajadamente.org), which revealed that adolescents are motivated to promote the MHWB of their peers but often lack the necessary skills. We have developed "Cadê o Kauê?," a digital chat-story to bolster Brazilian adolescents' skills to promote their peers' mental health within schools. Cadê o Kauê? has undergone two proof-of-concept studies, showing high acceptability and positive impact on youth skills and motivation. However, initial implementation revealed challenges such as inadequate digital infrastructure in Brazilian schools and external barriers such as the need for teacher training to deliver the intervention effectively and the support of young people's agencies. This project aims to address these challenges and develop a framework for implementation at scale of "Cadê o Kauê?" nationally in Brazilian schools. An interdisciplinary research team, spanning psychology, ethics, design, and population health, will collaborate with school communities, policymakers, filmmakers, and game designers across five work packages (WP). WP1 creates an offline version of the chat-story, optimised for state high schools. WP2 systematically reviews the literature on teacher skills for youth participation and will expand the intervention to include them. Working with a team of six teachers known for their youth activism and digital influence, we will co-design a multimedia training program to equip teachers with the skills to support adolescents as agents of change, thereby transforming Cadê o Kauê? into a multi-agent intervention toolkit. In WPs 3-4, we will investigate its effectiveness in Brazilian state high schools across five macro-regions (90 classrooms). Using a national, cluster-randomised controlled trial, we will assess the impact of Cadê o Kauê? (with teacher training) on adolescents' intentions and confidence to promote their peers' mental health. Subsequently, we will conduct an arts-based, realist evaluation to understand how adolescents and teachers perceive the intervention's contexts, mechanisms, and outcomes, culminating in a short documentary. WP5 will engage regional and national policymakers to discuss the findings and explore potential integration of Cadê o Kauê? into education policies supporting youth participation. This project will form a collaborative network of researchers in the UK and Brazil, of stakeholders committed to enhancing youth MHWB and creating supportive school environments. We envisage that the initiative will benefit school communities by offering evidence-based pathways through which adolescents become protagonists of social change. Ultimately we will make recommendations for the implementation of culturally-sensitive, socially-oriented interventions that are closely aligned with the values and priorities of young people.

Insect pollinators have undergone declines across the world, a result of factors including intensive agriculture, habitat loss, climate change and invasive species. This represents a major concern in Latin America (LATAM) where it threatens economically important crops and wider biodiversity. The impact of these losses in LATAM remains poorly understood, undermining the capacity to develop policies vital to mitigate pollinator losses and support both agricultural production and wider ecosystem health. A new, coherent evidence base is required, that considers impacts on individual species, their distributions and populations, the landscapes they persist in and their unique capacities to deliver pollination to different crops. Without this it will not be possible to develop the applied experimental and modelling solutions policy makers need to deliver sustainable farming economies. This proposal builds on Newton Phase 1 project SURPASS, an international collaboration between 37 participants, that identified knowledge gaps, issues, and research areas that prioritise conservation and sustainable use of LATAM pollinators. The SURPASS2 goal is to deliver evidence for the creation of resilient pollination services for sustainable economic growth, improved human health and wellbeing as well as positive environmental and agricultural outcomes. This will be addressed by five main objectives, co-designed with academics and stakeholders that establish interconnected work packages that build capacity to manage pollination services and provide tangible outcomes. Our goals will be delivered through 4 work packages: WP1) Monitoring populations and understanding their distributions: before any effective solution can be developed to manage LATAM pollinators it is crucial that we understand the current distribution of species and develop and trial approaches for long term monitoring. Only by understanding where pollinators can be found can we develop applied solutions to manage them. We will design a standardised framework to assess the status and trends of pollinator populations through existing and new monitoring schemes, including citizen science. WP2) How does the environment in which pollinators live affect them, and how does this affect capacity to provide crop pollination: Land use change and land management represent fundamental factors affecting pollinator populations. We will undertake detailed landscape scale experiments across LATAM focusing on production of economically significant crops to understand how landscape management affects pollinators and the pollination services they supply. This will provide data for models and help growers, land managers and policy makers to optimise pollination to sustainably increase crop yields and quality. We will also quantify how invasive species of pollinators impact on wild and native insect pollinators and plants. WP3) Understanding national scale deficits in pollination for key crops identifying areas where pollination services are at high risk. Using cutting edge satellite imagery we will map nationally the occurrence of key insect pollinated crops. We will link this data to the distribution of insect pollinator communities to assess if these populations provide adequate pollination, as well as modelling how resilient these communities are to species losses. As each species of insect pollinator is unique their loss can have potentially huge consequences for agricultural production. WP4) Develop a national scale predictive framework to support policy goals of maximising benefits for agricultural productivity provided by pollination. This will integrate results from WP1-3 to model pollinator communities to develop effective strategies for decision making processes for different stakeholders that benefit from insect pollination. This will provide the framework to work with stakeholders to produce a roadmap for maximising pollination services and long term monitoring in LATAM.

Insect pollinators have undergone declines across the world, a result of factors including intensive agriculture, habitat loss, climate change and invasive species. This represents a major concern in Latin America (LATAM) where it threatens economically important crops and wider biodiversity. The impact of these losses in LATAM remains poorly understood, undermining the capacity to develop policies vital to mitigate pollinator losses and support both agricultural production and wider ecosystem health. A new, coherent evidence base is required, that considers impacts on individual species, their distributions and populations, the landscapes they persist in and their unique capacities to deliver pollination to different crops. Without this it will not be possible to develop the applied experimental and modelling solutions policy makers need to deliver sustainable farming economies. This proposal builds on Newton Phase 1 project SURPASS, an international collaboration between 37 participants, that identified knowledge gaps, issues, and research areas that prioritise conservation and sustainable use of LATAM pollinators. The SURPASS2 goal is to deliver evidence for the creation of resilient pollination services for sustainable economic growth, improved human health and wellbeing as well as positive environmental and agricultural outcomes. This will be addressed by five main objectives, co-designed with academics and stakeholders that establish interconnected work packages that build capacity to manage pollination services and provide tangible outcomes. Our goals will be delivered through 4 work packages: WP1) Monitoring populations and understanding their distributions: before any effective solution can be developed to manage LATAM pollinators it is crucial that we understand the current distribution of species and develop and trial approaches for long term monitoring. Only by understanding where pollinators can be found can we develop applied solutions to manage them. We will design a standardised framework to assess the status and trends of pollinator populations through existing and new monitoring schemes, including citizen science. WP2) How does the environment in which pollinators live affect them, and how does this affect capacity to provide crop pollination: Land use change and land management represent fundamental factors affecting pollinator populations. We will undertake detailed landscape scale experiments across LATAM focusing on production of economically significant crops to understand how landscape management affects pollinators and the pollination services they supply. This will provide data for models and help growers, land managers and policy makers to optimise pollination to sustainably increase crop yields and quality. We will also quantify how invasive species of pollinators impact on wild and native insect pollinators and plants. WP3) Understanding national scale deficits in pollination for key crops identifying areas where pollination services are at high risk. Using cutting edge satellite imagery we will map nationally the occurrence of key insect pollinated crops. We will link this data to the distribution of insect pollinator communities to assess if these populations provide adequate pollination, as well as modelling how resilient these communities are to species losses. As each species of insect pollinator is unique their loss can have potentially huge consequences for agricultural production. WP4) Develop a national scale predictive framework to support policy goals of maximising benefits for agricultural productivity provided by pollination. This will integrate results from WP1-3 to model pollinator communities to develop effective strategies for decision making processes for different stakeholders that benefit from insect pollination. This will provide the framework to work with stakeholders to produce a roadmap for maximising pollination services and long term monitoring in LATAM.