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about Nature for Kids

Nature for Kids is a strong adversary in the fight against poverty by enlightening children (7 – 13) in Developing Countries on the significant importance of their environment and its management. We aspire to give them an insight of their natural surroundings to the extent whereby they are able to influence their own futures. They become the real hero’s who will manage to alter something within their own environment.
Nature for Kids designs and delivers an integrated - Education through Entertainment- program (tailor-made School TV), that will improve the quality of African children’s lives and enable them take a more active part in their communities.

Why Nature of Kids?
Poverty is seen to be both the cause and consequence of environmental problems in many developing countries. People are facing a variety of environmental problems such as erosion, loss of soil fertility, overgrazing, deforestation, vegetation changes, water pollution, rainfall changes and floods, resulting in low productivity and poverty among the rural communities. Land degradation is one of the major threats to agriculture as it causes loss of habitats for both plants and animals. It contributes directly to loss of biodiversity and makes land non-productive.
A lack of education and limited access to information impedes local communities in addressing the intertwined causes of poverty and environmental degradation. We firmly believe that one should begin by educating the younger generations, showing them that the cycle of poverty and environmental degradation can be broken by sustainable management of their natural resources. Furthermore, children in most developing countries are highly vulnerable to the effects of environmental degradation. To cultivate in children a sense of caring and appreciation for the environment is a vital step toward protecting their future.

HOW DOES NATURE FOR KIDS HELP?
Nature for Kids uses locally produced video/media productions as an educational tool, a new and innovative way to bring alive local environmental issues to schoolchildren, their teachers and families in African countries. Entertainment is a great way to deliver a message. It’s the most powerful tool to influence people on this planet. A series of custom made interactive educational media programmes can be produced in most countries suffering from serious environmental degradation resulting in life threatening poverty issues.
We can work on any required given environmental theme like deforestation, erosion, rural water management, waste management, marine/coastal management, agro forestry, bio diversity, pollution control, beekeeping, farming techniques, overgrazing, endangered animals and more. Our programmes are produced hand in hand with local environmental organisations and the local communities- for the local communities. Local people such as teachers, artists, translators, companies and crew will be involved and trained in the production, which will help stimulate the local economies.
In most of our programmes local African children and their families play the main role. The young actors in turn will impart the knowledge they have acquired throughout the filming to their fellow youngsters, the audience. These captivating video productions can be produced in any local language and can be delivered to most rural schools in different ways (with the help of a mobile video set up accompanied by local teachers, a satellite connection or local broadcasting). Our school TV programmes can also be supplemented with interactive educational resource packs for the purpose of in and outside the classroom activities. Where possible and overlapping; already produced programmes can simply be dubbed (we use voice over technique) in different native languages.
Our projects are designed to help some of the most disadvantaged schools and local communities have access to innovative resource materials and information.

Education through Entertainment: to educate schoolchildren
Entertainment is a great way to deliver a message. It’s a very powerful tool to influence people on this planet. The media of video productions and film also has the capacity to reach many individuals simultaneously. A single videotape/ DVD can educate hundreds of children, whereas a single book can only educate one or two at a time. In addition, visual images can be very powerful, and often stay in the mind longer than the written word.
Media can be used as part of a larger communication strategy to foster sustainable development and conservation. Locally produced educational programs can generate a tremendous, long-lasting enthusiasm among local residents for natural resource management and conservation and enhance people's interest in their local environment.
Nature for Kids takes environmental, economic, and social contexts of a particular place into consideration and shapes programmes to reflect these conditions in collaboration with our local partners. At grass-roots level, environmental film is an efficient community-organizing tool because it gathers people to share information and concerns.
However, virtually no school in rural African countries has televisions or video equipment. Most schools don’t even have electricity. We aim to deliver accessible media programmes which tackle the 'big' environmental issues, but are discussed in a 'small' way. Where suitable, the NfK programmes would also link to the issues of conservation and environmental awareness and protection in other countries. In this way children in Africa can relate to those overseas and how these children go about protecting their part of the world. Our programmes can also be enhanced by exchanging knowledge between schools in different regions, countries and ecosystems (for example through letter/photo writing or the internet).