The Wildlife Trust - Guest blog for "Every Child Wild" Campaign

Camp Avalon 2016
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

At the beginning of November, The Wildlife Trust launched their 'Every Child Wild’ Campaign. 

This is a campaign designed to demonstrate their work with children.  Every year, the trusts interact with 350,000 children with school visits, Forest Schools, Beach Schools, Nature Tots, Wildlife Watch groups, junior membership and family events.  They think that this is probably a gross underestimate, and we suspect that the figure could be as high as half a million.

Camp Avalon
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Through the Every Child Wild campaign, The Wildlife Trusts wanted to show:  

1)      Why it is so important for children to connect with nature

2)      The work that TWT do to achieve this

3)      Why TWT need support from the general public to carry it out

November was to be a ‘soft launch’, with a much wider national campaign delivered by TWT in 2016, involving the policy change from Government or a comprehensive schools programme. 

As part of its national communications strategy, TWT ran a series of guest blogs answering the question “What do you think would be the most important, and effective, change that could be made to ensure that future generations love wildlife?”

My guest blog was teenagers and ethnic minority teenagers being engaged in nature:

"The most important change has got to be the targeting of secondary school age children; successfully engaging this age group with nature, conservation and the environment is the single most crucial step, in order to ensure future generations love wildlife."

My guest blog can be found at http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/blog/everychildwild/2015/12/01/mya-rose-craig-every-child-wild

Camp Avalon
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Camp Avalon
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Camp Avalon
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

About the Writer

Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig on Scilly

Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

Mya-Rose Craig is a 13 year old young birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and is looking forward to watching Penguins in Antarctica in December 2015, which will be her 7th continent. 

Mya-Rose is a Bristol European Green Capital 2015 Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol 2015 Ambassadors. She has also been listed with the singer songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people. Please like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter