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Forget Grades! Educate for Human Potential Instead.

Youth Everywhere Are Protesting for Urgent Action On Climate Change!

Feb 16, 2019
3 min

Youth Everywhere Are Protesting for Urgent Action On Climate Change!

On 23rd January 2019, 16 year old Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg, addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In contrast to the many delegates who arrived by up to 1,500 individual private jet flights, Thunberg took a 32-hour train ride to get there. She told a Davos panel “Some people, some companies, some decision makers in particular have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money

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Getting Kids in Nature is Not Enough. Actions Speak Louder Than Words.

Dec 21, 2018
4 min

Getting Kids in Nature is Not Enough. Actions Speak Louder Than Words.

If we are to create a new generation of ecoliterate young people who truly understand and value nature's life supporting systems, we must join up the dots through education. The need for Environmental Education (EE) that begins in pre-school and is completely integrated into the curriculum throughout compulsory schooling cannot be overstated. In arguably the most comprehensive overview of the current state of our natural world, the Living Planet Report 2018 shows the staggeri

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Top 5 Ways to Empower Children to Tackle the 21st Century Environmental Burden We're Leaving Them

Dec 5, 2018
4 min

Top 5 Ways to Empower Children to Tackle the 21st Century Environmental Burden We're Leaving Them

Environmental Education (EE) in the context of sustainable development is essential for the next generation to build a brighter future in the 21st Century. It's vital in order to meet the sizable (and growing) environmental challenges we face. What's certain is that today's youth must gain deeper levels of environmental understanding and ecological literacy, through carefully constructed education which begins in pre-school, and is not only integrated, but intimately interwov

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Philanthropy is Not the Solution to Sustainability. Here's Why.

Nov 26, 2018
3 min

Philanthropy is Not the Solution to Sustainability. Here's Why.

Ecosia is a commercially-driven and clever search engine powered by Microsoft. But why would anyone want to change search engines from Google or Bing? Well, there's one huge difference. Ecosia is 'the search engine which plants trees.' Every time you make a search on Ecosia, income is created through ads and the profit generated is spent on planting trees. Genius right? "Social enterprise has the power and scaleability to solve global sustainability problems by re-channeling

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Our Education System is Failing to Prepare Children for the 21st Century. Here's Why.

Nov 11, 2018
4 min

Our Education System is Failing to Prepare Children for the 21st Century. Here's Why.

What outcomes should we seek from our education system, if we are to successfully prepare the next generation of young minds for a highly globalized and uncertain 21st Century? Graduating school with top grades? Having a good foundation in maths, science and English? Being able to get a job after graduating? Developing a range of dynamic skills? Exam Results and League Tables Well, I would argue that success for children in education comes in a wide variety of forms, and whet

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Outdoor Education & the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Nov 2, 2018
4 min

Outdoor Education & the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Outdoor education has come to mean many things. It can mean anything from adventure-based learning to environmental education, service learning in the local community or visiting a local museum. Essentially, when I refer to outdoor education, I'm including any learning which takes place outside of a traditional classroom setting. "The UN Sustainable Development Goals are a universal call to action with the aim of achieving 17 extraordinary global objectives by 2030." This blo

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Educate Not Advocate: The Key to Sustainability?

Oct 26, 2018
3 min

Educate Not Advocate: The Key to Sustainability?

According to Dictionary.com, the verb "to advocate" means "to speak or write in favor of, support or urge by argument; to recommend publicly." In other words, an advocate is a person who speaks or writes in support of a cause. But importantly, there's a big distinction between advocacy and education, and this is something I feel the need to address in this blog post. The Age of Alternative Facts In our digital age of Twitter feeds, "fake news" and information overload, it's n

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Community Mapping: What's Affecting Your Neighborhood?

Oct 20, 2018
5 min

Community Mapping: What's Affecting Your Neighborhood?

In service learning, students learn to tackle real-world problems in their community, while building deeper understanding and skills for themselves. I've seen first-hand what service learning can do to help the local community, while also providing valuable learning experiences for young people. The best thing is - it can be a real win, win. By both empowering youngsters to make positive real-world change (e.g. tree planting, building community facilities in under resourced c

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Can We Educate Today's Youth to Create a Sustainable Future?

Oct 17, 2018
5 min

Can We Educate Today's Youth to Create a Sustainable Future?

Changemakers are people who desire change in the world and, by gathering knowledge and resources, make that change happen. To achieve meaningful change on sustainability issues, it's crucial that the next generation are well-informed of global socio-political and environmental issues and develop well-formed values, based on knowledge and critical thinking. But being informed is only half the answer, as young people also need the confidence and resilience to make real change a

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