An unprecedented coalition of over 70 environmental and education experts came together to help parents, students and pupils with a series of lessons called Earth School. The programme is designed to help them discover and celebrate our connection with nature (https://ed.ted.com/earthschool and https://youtu.be/NogD8Z57gFA).
Earth School has been developed under the guidance of TED-Ed, plus a cross-divisional team at UNEP who joined forces to curate the first set of lessons in just three weeks! The overall effort has been supported by a global team of some 50 collaborating institutions – including National Geographic, BBC Ideas, WWF, Conservation International, the Nature Conservancy and IUCN. Bill Nye (“the Science Guy”) and Greta Thunberg are also planning to engage in the social media outreach effort. Earth School has also been connected to the UNESCO global education coalition working on the COVID-19 rapid education response.
The aims of Earth School are threefold. First, to help parents, teachers and pupils in lock-down to feel the awe and wonder of nature. Second, to understand how intertwined we are with the planet. Finally, to see how we can each act to live cleaner, healthier and greener lives.
The curriculum covers real-world concepts like what is required to produce the T-shirts we wear, the water we drink, and the food on our plates. Each Earth School Quest will consist of a discovery video and fun quiz. These are combined with a series of interactive resources as well as a combination of inside and outdoor activities. Earth School was launched last week for Earth Day. The challenge runs right up to our World Environment Day celebrations (5 June) based on the theme of For Nature.
Feel free to circulate by:
- Shareing the link with your friends, family and contacts: You can check out the promotional video here and this blog post here. But please do share the lessons with your family and friends or people in your networks who you think would be interested in this. (FYI is auto translated into 10 languages too.)
- Shareing it on social media: The Comms Division together with our Earth School Collaborators have already achieved a social media reach of over 20 million people. We would like to double down on our social media efforts as well as extend this reach to 100 million to ensure a strong conversation rate. We would like to invite UNEP colleagues (who are active on social media) to share a few social media posts using our social media kit. The logo and brand guidelines are here while social media cards are here. Any posts must use the hashtag #EarthSchool and #ForNature as well as the handles @UNEP and @TED_ED and the platform URL: https://ed.ted.com/earthschool.
