I’ve been thinking a lot about kids and climate change lately. I’m not just wondering, as I often do, what they’ll think of our response to the crisis and what they’ll do when they are adults. I’ve actually been trying to work out how to explain climate change to them without scaring their little socks off.
The reason I’ve been thinking about this is that our popular polar bears will be at the Eco kids festival on September 13th at Sydney’s Luna Park to talk to kids about climate change. They will be running some fun activities with kids, including a competition. The day will feature an appearance by Dorothy the Dinosaur and includes lots of intereactive workshops for kids. It should be a great day and we’d love to see you there.
To support our presence at this festival and other events, I was tasked with pulling together positive information on climate change for kids.
If you have kids, you may know what I’m talking about when I say that at first I felt a little daunted by this task. It seemed a bit like being asked to be upbeat about the death of the Easter Bunny (who of course kids, if you are reading this, is never going to die). I was asking myself: how can I make this topic suitable for kids?
After some rumination, however, I realised that I was totally missing the point. The whole point to telling kids, or anyone, about climate change is that there’s hope. It’s worth knowing that we can solve the climate crisis and we all have the power to make the world a better place. In fact that has to be one of the most positive and important things we can all know, right?
So, thanks to our amazing designer, Anna, and feedback from kids and parents, we now have a leaflet and posters on climate change for kids aged from 7 to 11. They provide information on the causes and solutions to climate change and what kids can do and are doing about climate change. It’s a small start, but it feels great to begin meeting the demand for information on the environment for kids. You can download the leaflet here and I’ll put the posters up shortly. What do you think of them? More importantly, what do your kids think of them? Your feedback will help inform future materials.
And if you want to get your kids excited and feeling empowered about the environment, join us and many others at the Eco Kids Festival in Sydney on Sunday September 13th. Hope to see you there.
