RESEAU OCEAN MONDIAL AISBL

Their core work

Réseau Océan Mondial (World Ocean Network) is a Brussels-registered international NGO that operates as a global hub for ocean literacy, public awareness, and citizen mobilization around marine health. Their core work is connecting educators, civil society groups, scientists, and citizen communities — both in Europe and across the Atlantic — to foster behavioral change toward more sustainable ocean stewardship. In EU-funded projects they have functioned as a network broker and community enabler, facilitating mutual learning between diverse marine communities rather than conducting original research. They also contributed to building digital knowledge-sharing infrastructure designed to sustain Responsible Research and Innovation communities in the marine sector.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first project (SeaChange, 2015-2018), ROM WON focused on the human side of ocean health: behavioral change, citizen engagement, mutual learning, and building transatlantic connections. By their second project (MARINA, 2016-2019), the emphasis shifted from mobilizing people to building the structural and digital infrastructure — a knowledge-sharing platform and a socio-technical ecosystem — needed to sustain marine RRI communities over time. This suggests a maturation from running awareness campaigns to designing the organizational and technical systems that make such communities self-sustaining.

ROM WON appears to be moving from direct public engagement activities toward building durable digital and organizational infrastructure for ocean knowledge communities — a shift that could make them a valuable partner in blue economy governance or ocean data literacy projects.

How they like to work

ROM WON has participated in both projects exclusively as a partner, never as coordinator, which is consistent with their role as a network mobilizer rather than a scientific or technical lead. Despite only two projects, they engaged with 34 unique partners across 18 countries — an unusually broad network footprint for an organization of this size, suggesting they bring genuine connectivity value to consortia. Consortium builders should expect them to contribute community reach and public engagement channels, not technical research outputs.

ROM WON connected with 34 unique partners across 18 countries through just two projects, indicating a wide-reaching international network disproportionate to their project volume. Their explicit transatlantic focus in SeaChange suggests their connections extend well beyond the EU, potentially into North American and global ocean literacy networks.

What sets them apart

ROM WON occupies a rare niche as a globally-oriented ocean NGO embedded in EU research consortia — they offer something most marine science or blue economy partners cannot: direct access to citizen communities, ocean educators, and civil society networks across continents. For any project that needs a public engagement or behavioral change component in the marine domain, they provide legitimacy and reach that no university or research institute can replicate. Their transatlantic connections are particularly distinctive and hard to substitute within a European consortium.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SeaChange
  The larger of their two projects (EUR 263,562) and their most distinctive contribution — explicitly targeting behavioral change and transatlantic citizen engagement around ocean health, which is rare in H2020 marine research portfolios.
• MARINA
  Focused on federating Responsible Research and Innovation communities through a marine knowledge-sharing platform, showing ROM WON's capacity to contribute to digital infrastructure for scientific communities, not just public outreach.