Every child is a birder. They just don’t know it yet. The wonder we all feel when reconnecting with nature is innately within us, typically pulled away from us through the trials and tribulations of life. So how do you ensure that this feeling of connection never leaves? If you’re Flock Together, you channel your best Wu Tang impression and get the children involved earlier.
Hardwired into every young mind is the urge to explore, to investigate, and to play. Birding is the playground where these instincts can run free. At a time when parents around the world are finding out firsthand how difficult a job teaching is, we can all learn from nature. Nature teaches patience, it calms racing minds, it encourages care and sparks compassion. Perhaps most important of all, it poses questions for young minds to answer.
The current reality is that birding is exclusive: binoculars are expensive and the leisure time to use them is also a privilege. Added to that, people of colour have been historically shut out of the green spaces where these life-changing encounters with nature take place.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Systemic failings require radical responses and new thinking. Flock Together Academy will be a place to inspire the next generation of young birders to look up. We will do this by providing school-age children with a safe place to discover birding, nature and ecology, aided by the guidance of Flock Together mentors.
We’ve already hosted the first Flock Together Academy sessions on a small scale. London Wildlife Trust has stepped up, grating us the use of their green spaces and education facilities. Now we’re working hard to scale this up as our community grows.
Watch this (green) space. Flock Together is for the children.
