birdgirl: every child wild

Showing posts with label every child wild. Show all posts

Wednesday, 5 June 2019

Camp Chew June 2019 Flyer

Black2Nature

Camp Chew 2019 - Fri 21 - Sat 22 Jun 2019

Camp Chew 2017

A nature weekend for children aged 7 to 11, who will love

Having fun outside in nature
Using the outdoors to get fit & healthy
Trying new things like camping
Making new friends

How to Book

Book on Eventbrite
Text or phone Helena on 07798818772
E-mail helenabcraig@hotmail.co.uk

£10 per child (or £15 for siblings) with free places offered

Free transport from Bristol

Food all vegetarian (or halal fish and chips available for lunch)

Location - Compton Martin Amenity Field BS40 6JN

Children supervised at all times by DBS checked adults

About the Author

Young environmentalist and birder Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig

Camp Avalon and Camp Chew are the ideas of Mya-Rose Craig, who also organised the first events in 2015. She is organising the 2017 camp with the organisation she has formed Black2Nature and hopes to attract more young birders and inner-city teenagers.

Mya-Rose Craig is a 16-year-old young British Bangladeshi birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, activist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes posts about birding, conservation and environmental issues from around the world.

She has been involved in the UK organisation of the Youth Strikes encouraging young people from around the world to not go to school once a month and protest instead demanding immediate action to prevent climate breakdown. This is an interview in New Statesman.

She was a Bristol European Green Capital Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol 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.

She organised four nature camps for children and teenagers since 2015 and is helping to run four more in 2019. She also organised a conference, Race Equality in Nature, in June 2016 aiming to increase the ethnic diversity in nature and plans two more in 2019. She has also set up Black2Nature with the aim of working with organisations to increase the access to nature of Visible Minority Ethnic people and is President. Please connect with her on LinkedIn (Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig) so that she can invite you to join the Race Equality in Nature LinkedIn Group and be part of the change.

She has given over 50 talks, speaking at conferences such as being on a panel with George Monbiot and Caroline Lucas on Sustainability and the Future of Cities. She is a Minister in Chris Packham's Manifesto for Nature in 2018 and spoke in front of 10,000 people at the Walk for Nature. She has also appeared on TV and radio and is particularly proud of being in Silent Roars, a short film which was part of Listen to Britain 2017 https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-silent-roars-2017-online.

She has been awarded the Bath and West Show Environmental Youth Award 2017 for Bristol for her Black2Nature work EYA 2017. She was also listed as one of Bristol's BME top 100 powerlist.

She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and Penguins in Antarctica over Christmas 2015, her 7th continent. She became the youngest person to see 5000 birds in 2019 age 16 and is looking forward to visiting Brazil birding in 2019 and hopes to see half the birds in the world there. Please also like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter. If you would like to contact Mya-Rose about her work, please e-mail helenabcraig@hotmail.co.uk.

Monday, 30 November 2015

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

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

Friday, 13 November 2015

The Wildlife Trust - Every Child Wild Podcast

Sorell Lyall, Nathan Burch, Alex White, Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig, Billy Stockwell
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

In September, I, along with other young people interested in nature of varying secondary school age were invited by Lucy McRoberts of The Wildlife Trusts (TWT) to take part in a discussion on key questions related to getting kids into nature. It was excellent that TWT were giving us young people a voice in something relating to us.

Some of the questions we were invited to discuss were:

1) What do you think TWT should be doing to connect the next generation with wildlife?

2) What do you think Government should be doing to connect the next generation with wildlife?

3) What are the barriers to young people connecting with wildlife?

The discussion was to be recorded and published as a podcast by Charlie Moores of Talking Naturally speaking. What we said would help shape the future direction of TWT policies on young people and also inspire other young people.

In October, myself, Nathan Bach (age 10), Alex White (age 12), Sorrell Lyall age 16, Billy Stockwell (age 16) met in Brandon NR in Warwickshire. The session was chaired by Charlie Moores with Emma Websdale and Adam Cormack from TWT available for help. The link is bit.ly/1kzXxeD

Charlie Moores, Billy Stockwell, Sorell Lyall, Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig, Emma Websdale, Adam Cormack
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Charlie Moores, Billy Stockwell, Sorell Lyall, Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

The discussion was really empowering and lasted 4 hours. It was a brilliant thing for TWT to have done and Charlie Moores was fantastic directing the meeting.

Originally, we were to be two groups, over 14 and under 14 but because there were 5 of us we ended up being in one group. It was great to give my opinion but the session was the first time I had spoken in a group like this, and with such a mixed age group. It was a really big learning curve for all of us.

If TWT were to repeat the session next year, would give the following feedback:

· Break the group into two by age. As we had a large age range, this had an impact on each of our confidence within the group;

· It would be good to keep the warm up short, as lots of interesting points were discussed before recording started.

· It would be good to give different people the opportunity to contribute in future years, but I don’t think that those taking part this year should be barred, as they might have been involved in a relevant project and so have something specific to contribute (e.g. Camp Avalon).

· Whilst Charlie was great, it would be good to alternate and maybe try someone who has experience of dealing with teenagers, like David Walsh who used to be a teacher and now acts as a mentor to teenage birders.

· Part of group dynamics is learning how to create a space to have your say without talking over people and also making sure that you are giving other people a chance to speak. These are things adults find hard, let alone us to manage as young people in our first group discussion. I think that next time we should have a flag we can hold up, when we have something to say, so that we don’t have to interrupt anyone to speak.

· Now that the discussion has taken place once, next time I would make it more peer led, with less adult views in the podcast.

· I think that each young person should raise a few areas that they want to discuss before the event, so that these are included. Although I mentioned diversity as an issue, the conversation went elsewhere and I didn’t get a chance to talk about it. It turned out that Charlie did not know about my arranging Camp Avalon until afterwards and so could not ask me about it.

These are small suggestions, which hopefully will be taken positively by everyone. Thank you again to Lucy McRoberts for organizing this event, which left me feeling really empowered.

Sorrell Lyall, Nathan Burch, Alex White, Birdgirl Mya-Rose, Billy Stockwell
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Adam Cormack, Sorell Lyall, Billy Stockwell, Charlie Moores,
Nathan Burch, Alex White, Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig, Emma Websdale
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