We hear so much bad news about forests, it’s always encouraging to hear some good news!

The Children’s Forest in the UK is a great initiative that seeks to encourage children to get to know trees, enjoy them, be creative amongst them, forage underneath them, and plant new ones.

It’s grown out of the activities of a group of forest school facilitators in the UK who have been working and playing with children in the woods for years. They saw children light up in nature, naturally connecting and caring for the animals, birds and trees around them. This extended into a calling to involve the children directly in the planting of forests for children of the future.

I think it’s a lovely initiative. The Children’s Forest offers children the opportunity to become guardians and caretakers of the earth. We need such an approach desperately these days. To think of the youngest generation growing up with such beliefs is inspiring and hopeful.

Specifically, since the start of Children’s Forest in 2019 the organization has achieved the following:

• Planted over 5000 trees in 13 forests across the UK with many groups of children.
• Created regular community events, bringing inter-generational communities together to connect with each other and with nature.
• Created a Tree Nursery, home to over 800 saplings, planted and tended by children and the community.
• Held regular Tree Choirs in Sussex and London.
• Offered 15 nature connection courses, sharing ancestral skills such as fire making, acorn processing and foraging.
• Held 3 Facilitator training courses, training more than 50 facilitators, enabling more nature mentors to plant Children’s Forests.

Here’s a lovely video where they explain Children’s Forest much better than I’ve just done:

How to help Children’s Forest (in the UK)

If you are reading this and you live in the UK, you could do your bit to help Children’s Forest by voting for them so that they are given money from the UK National Lottery. This will enable them to grow more children’s forests throughout the UK.

Unfortunately I tried to vote but couldn’t, which is when I read the small print to see you have to be based in the UK. (I found a work-around by voting on behalf of my Dad who lives in the UK but doesn’t have internet. Maybe you could find your own work-around?).

I wish this initiative every success and hope they get enough votes to get extra funding.