Faced with the challenged of keeping the attention of thirty 8 year olds I decided to keep my presentation short and sweet. I put in lots of pretty pictures and cute animals to keep them amused, I took them the feather of a military macaw to handle and they even got a video thrown in! The video (below) is one I made for Frontier whilst I was working for them:
The children were so enthusiastic that they kept asking questions and I was talking to them for an hour and a half!
In among the fun and the pretty pictures, there were a few key points I wanted to get across to the children:
- There are still relatively untouched parts and species of the rainforest we don't know much about
- There are places where people live without TV, phones and internet and it doesn't matter because there's more exciting things to do and see
- Life as we know it relies on rainforests; for oxygen, medicine and climate regulation
The best part of doing this was to find out that these 8 year olds already knew a lot. They recognised far more plants and animals than I expected, they were aware of the ecosystem services provided by the forest and most of all they had been inspired to care about the issues facing the forest, such as deforestation. One bright little girl even had a range of suggestions as to how we could start tackling the issue!
The rainforests are fantastic, and no doubt vital to life on Earth. But we mustn't forget that all nature is important and we need to hold on to as much as we can. A great start to this is to educate people and inspire the young minds that will be fighting this issue in the future. Maybe I'm being over-dramatic but if I got even one of those children to care a little bit more about nature, I'm happy.
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