Every 15 minutes, a wild elephant is murdered, the face cut off, the tusks stolen and smuggled across the ocean, while the babies are left to die. At this rate of 30,000 per year, wild elephants will be extinct in a 5-10 years!

As Nellie presented these facts at her school, her peers were shocked. The same day, they told their parents never to buy ivory, and convinced the school principal to return the school’s ivory exhibit to the ministry.

Since their home city of Hong Kong is the centre of illegal trade to China, the big ivory market, they started street demonstrations. Shocked by the gory photos, 17,000 people signed their petition to burn confiscated ivory, and the government agreed!

… broke the media silence on illegal ivory in China. A feature in National Geographic followed.

Big stores took ivory off the shelves, sport and film stars joined in, the Hong Kong government started to burn confiscated smuggled ivory (after refusing to do so for 30 years).

Later that year, mainland China issued a moratorium on ivory import and one year later happened what organizations had considered “impossible” – China ordered closing of traditional ivory carving factories.

There is no trusting dictatorial, genocidal and ecocidal China, so one must not sit back with a sigh of relief, but take Nellie’s example as a blueprint to ban ivory trade in your country forever and harshly criminalize poaching and trafficking in Africa. Join in! Forever. For the Ellies!

Children and teens can easily create a bond with The Land

• that makes considerable impact
• on land and lives of ecosystems, animals, humans
• of relevance for society
• that solves problems that public institutions in charge cannot afford or achieve

boosting

• beauty and economy
• active citizenship
• mental health
• involvement of youth, families and seniors
• involvement of schools
• a sense of community   
• positive news
• relations and friendships 

and BUILDING A BOND BETWEEN YOUTH AND THE LAND

• we will understand what we experience
• we will love what enriches our life
• we will protect what we love
• we can protect, restore and evolve what we understand
• we understand what The Commons mean
• we understand what Ecocide Law means 
• that makes them LOVERS and GUARDIANS of the LAND they LOVE
• with a sound sense of the SACRED. 

TO NURTURE THIS

it is required that inter/actions with nature

• are fun, magical, adventurous (remember Philanthro-Party Philosophy)
• sensual, deep, surprising, memorable
• meaningful, with purpose

which means NOT just walks = visual consumption / an outside observer

but immersion with PURPOSE, such as

• rare species discovery and accounting on inaturalist.org
• springwatch of birds and babies, like the BBC’s Hannah Stitfall does
• meet your farmers
• clean-ups
• micro adventures
• canoeing and kayaking expeditions
• bushcraft
• animal walks (with horses, donkeys, lamas, dogs …)
• fairy trails
• plantings of all sorts
• edible landscaping
• wildlife migration paths
• educational trails – with artsy touch
• tourism guide APPs, spoken by kids and teens, co-created with schools, parks …

and all this casually vividly documented for

• more activities
• more reach
• more impact
• more follow-up
• more fun

YL Actions Guides and Programs offer

• many quick missions
• big, challenging exciting ventures
• also in collaboration with inter/national partner schools etc
• such as : wildlife migration paths across continents! hosted by schools (birds, Monarch butterflies, …) 
• such as : eco-cultural tourism trails between schools, with APP and local youth guides and youth hosts; also in disconnected rural regions = social entrepreneurship with a good income 

that will for sure make welcome wows and waves in your region’s schools and public!

Speaking of waves … let’s look at the oceans.