Reconnect City Children (and Adults) with Nature

Details: Environmental Factors - EQF Level 3

Picture by Singkham from Pexels

Humans are tending to abandon the countryside to live in increasingly developed urban centres, thus gradually forgetting the link and interdependence between them and nature. This module helps to:

Reconnect city dwellers with nature
Raise awareness of environmental issues among city dwellers, especially children
Make people benefit from the physical and mental benefits of nature through an outing in a natural area

Task

By Hannah Grapp from Pexels

As a front-line worker, you will prepare a trip to a natural area/green space to help children (and adults) reconnect with nature through a “scavenger hunt” type activity. Your task is to raise peoples awareness on environmental issues, the importance of protecting nature and ecosystems and the existing interdependence between nature and humans.

In this activity you will:

Empower your connection with nature
Learn how climate change is threatening humans and particularly children
Explore and be familiar with your local green areas
Take advantage of the benefits of nature for the health of people in general and for the personal development of children

Process

This activity is intended to be conducted in groups. The size of the group of participants depends on your available resources (human and financial) to properly manage this activity.

All participants should be divided in small groups of 3 people maximum to fill out the checklist properly.

As a prerequisite, you need to have a basic knowledge on the natural area that you have selected to perform the activity.

Use the document “Process to conduct the outdoor activity” provided in the resource sections to perform the activity.

Conclusion

By living in urban spaces, people forget what nature really is or imagine a nature that responds to human needs and adapts to its constraints. However, through this activity, it is important to make people understand, from an early age, that humans thrive on their natural resources. Although they are highly responsive to changing environmental stresses, people (especially city dwellers) need to reconnect with nature to maintain this connection and to provide an understanding of the interdependence between humans and nature and the importance of environmental preservation.

In addition, from a human perspective, protecting environment has several benefits such as:

Saving lives by contributing to the fight against world hunger, global warming, species extinction, crop failure….
Creating new jobs
Preserving natural resources
Benefiting to animal welfare
Contributing to enhance the human health and wellbeing

Evaluation

Learning Objectives

Understand sustainable wellbeing and the importance of nature as a source of health and wellbeing
Empower people including city-dwellers to take action for the environment through nature-based interventions to promote health and well being for both people and the planet
Discover nature including all its components (fauna & flora, soil, water…)

Knowledge