Changes at "Children4Soil Movement: Championing Soil Health Justice through Soil Literacy from Early Age"
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-Children4Soil Movement: Championing Soil Health Justice through Soil Literacy from Early Age- +Summary of the challenge
- +Most children across Africa, Europe and other parts of the world grow up disconnected from the soil, despite it being the foundation of life. Their minds are wired to view soil as dirt not to play with and yet it sustains food they eat to live. In many countries across the globe, Soil Literacy is not part of national curricula, and rarely do young people participate in environmental policymaking. This issue threatens the future of our natural ecosystems and food security. The Children4Soil Movement aims at addressing this systemic exclusion through creative soil education accompanied with regenerative soil practices, and advocacy for behavioural change towards soil from early age.
- +Detailed description
- +Paradoxically, children across Africa, Europe, America Asia, Oceania, and eve other corner of the world, grow up unaware of the priceless value of the soil. Why? Because from an early age, they are indoctrinated – explicitly or implicitly – to view soil as “dirt” that should be avoided, rather than as the living, breathing medium that sustains our food, filters our water, and supports biodiversity. This harmful indoctrination is exacerbated by modern education systems that exclude soil literacy from pre-primary, primary national curricula, even at secondary school and university levels in some cases, and by the lack of opportunities for young people to meaningfully engage in environmental policymaking or ecosystem stewardship. This rising disconnection of younger generations from soil threatens the long-term resilience of our food systems and natural ecosystems. It also undermines opportunities for behavioural change, ecological restoration, and citizen-led soil regeneration from the ground up. The Children4Soil Movement seeks to address this systemic exclusion through a multi-layered, intergenerational approach that combines creative soil education, regenerative practices, and targeted advocacy for soil health justice and soil literacy inclusion in the national curricula around the world. The initiative was partly inspired by my participation in the inaugural Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit held in Nairobi – Kenya in 2024. At that time, I was working at AGRA as a Youth and Gender Inclusiveness Advocate. At the Summit, my role included coordinating participation of youths in the Summit. I remember writing a poem “My Soil” that was celebrated and shared on AGRA’s platforms. It also found its inspiration from my participation in the Youth4Soil training and mentorship at Coalition of Action for Soil Health (CA4SH) in the same year. It is in that line that, with the support of CA4SH), I began writing ‘My Family Cares for Soil’ – a soil literacy children’s poetry book series with the first book published on World Soil Day (December 5) in 2024. The book uses creative language and illustrations to communicate soil knowledge in a fun, child-friendly format. I hope that with feedback from schools, educators, and global soil actors, the movement will expand to include new books in multiple languages (English, French, Swahili,...), co-created by children through workshops and community events. Currently I serve as a policy coordinator within the Youth Taskforce at the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and I have vowed to leverage this critical platform to showcase and carry forward the ‘Children4Soil Movement’ as its mission resonates with the work the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is focusing on. Children4Soil Movement goes beyond books. I hope to organize workshops in schools and communities, where children learn to connect with soil through home and school gardening, composting, soil testing, storytelling, and artwork. These activities are designed to foster care, curiosity, and custodianship toward soil at a young age. Children are invited to contribute their own stories and illustrations, making future volumes of the book co-created and rooted in their lived experiences – strengthening ownership and impact. The challenge is not only to scale this model, but to embed it within broader systemic change. We are advocating for the integration of soil literacy into early childhood education curricula across Africa, Europe and the rest of the world starting with Kenya as the host of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) whose mission is close to what the Movement stands for. I see this initiative as a long-term intervention to champion commons stewardship and ecological literacy. With further support, including guidance and collaboration through the SoilTribes Bootcamp, the Children4Soil Movement has the potential to inspire similar models across Europe and globally. By grounding soil advocacy in creativity, education, and children’s rights, this challenge opens up a new frontier for soil justice – one that starts from the ground up, in classrooms, playgrounds, and gardens.
- +Which SoilTribes priority area(s) does your challenge address?
- +Commons Stewardship
- +How does your challenge respond to the selected SoilTribes priority area(s)?
- +The Children4Soil Movement embodies Commons Stewardship as it aims at championing intergenerational learning around soil care. By combining education, creativity, and regenerative practices, the initiative instills a deep sense of soil custodianship. Through community-driven workshops, school gardens, and co-created educational tools mainly ‘My Family Cares for Soil’ book series, children will actively engage in stewarding soil as a public good. The initiative emphasizes that soil is not just a scientific resource but a living common that belongs to all future generations, thus reclaiming soil stewardship as a democratic and inclusive responsibility.
- +Which EU Soil Mission goal(s) does your challenge contribute to?
- +Reduce soil pollution / enhance restoration
- +Conserve soil organic carbon
- +Reduce desertification
- +Enhance soil biodiversity
- +Challenge typology
- +Roots (deep structural transformation)
- +Expected outputs / actions
- +Awareness-raising / communications
- +Creative or cultural events
- +Capacity-building (training, guides, mentorship)
- +Policy or advocacy initiatives
- +Participatory processes
- +Who is involved or affected by the challenge?
- +The challenge will primarily engage children aged 5–16 in Kenya and another country from Europe (to be chosen) with plans to expand across Africa and globally. Stakeholders include schools, educators, local artists, the Coalition of Action for Soil Health (CA4SH), the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration Youth Taskforce, and potentially Ban Kimoon Centre and Global Center on Adaptation; parents, community leaders, and curriculum developers. These groups will collaborate to design, implement, and replicate soil literacy, carry out advocacy and engagement activities.
- +Where is your challenge located?
- +Nairobi, Kenya
- +Which SoilTribes pillar(s) are you connected to?
- +Academia, Education & Research
- +What public policies or institutional frameworks does your challenge engage with or seek to change?
- +• Kenya’s Basic Education Curriculum Framework (BECF) to integrate soil literacy from pre-primary to secondary levels • Global education policies influenced by UNEP and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration • Regional education integration under AU’s Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA 16–25) • Potential alignment with the EU Soil Monitoring Law to inspire youth-focused education reforms in Europe
- +How do you imagine the Bootcamp will benefit your initiative — and others?
- +The Bootcamp offers me a space not only to showcase my initiative but also to refine the Children4Soil Movement’s model with input from cross-sectoral collaborators and systems thinkers, particularly those from the SoilTribes Community of Practice I am part of. I hope to co-develop a toolkit for integrating soil literacy into educational systems across diverse cultural contexts. Additionally, I can contribute my creative methodology for engaging children and advocating curriculum reform. I seek to build strategic partnerships with European schools and soil literacy actors, and explore co-design tools, evaluation methods, and policy channels for scaling the initiative globally.
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