This December, The Conservation Volunteers are one of the many charities that will benefit from ICAP Charity Day.
Taking place on 10th December, ICAP Charity Day sees the interdealer broker globally raise and donate 100% of their revenues and commissions to charity for one day, with the help of some famous faces along the way.
This year, TCV are one of those charities. With the money raised on the day, we will be launching The ICAP Fruit Tree Initiative – From the Ground Up!
From the Ground Up! will engage and educate school children in the natural outdoor classroom by planting and nurturing a tree from the ground upwards.
For many children, this will be their first opportunity to connect with nature to create positive lifelong memories after a time where the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the life of every child in the country.
Why schools?
Sadly, today our children are growing up more and more disconnected from nature. Around 75% of UK children spend less than an hour outside every day according to one study.
Since the 1970s, opportunities for children to explore and learn about the environment have reduced dramatically. With more than 10,000 school playing fields across Britain being turned over to development, it’s unsurprising that our children are disconnecting from nature[1] [2].
At TCV, we work within urban areas where safe and accessible green spaces can sometimes be few and far between. Our team have seen first-hand the effects of being disengaged with nature can have on the younger generations.
We’ve had children visit us who are reluctant to walk through woodland because they’ve never been under a closed tree canopy before and children who have rarely played on grass, because they are from a Victorian part of the city with back to back housing and tarmac schoolyards.”
Lucy Wheeler – TCV Skelton Grange (Leeds) Operations Leader.
By participating in The ICAP Fruit Tree Planting Initiative – From the Ground Up! children will become gardeners, botanists and scientists. They will be able to experience the sights, scents and textures of the outdoors which every child needs to thrive.
From the Ground Up! will provide countless opportunities for discovery, creativity, problem-solving, and STEM education. By interacting with the natural environment around them, children will learn more about the environment they live and what they need to do to help it survive.
Why trees?
Trees are not only aesthetically pleasing and able to provide a multitude of environmental and educational benefits – they are carbon-busting, air-enhancing, biodiversity-increasing, shade-providing wooden wonders! All beneficial to children, schools, the environment, and to the local wildlife.
Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere and does so at a more rapid rate as they mature. Tree planting is direct action in the fight against climate change. By engaging our children with tree planting, we are teaching them to care for and to protect their natural environment.
In the words of our Vice President Sir David Attenborough, “No one will protect what they don’t care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced”.
By planting trees, this project will leave a lifelong legacy for 50+ years in schools across the UK. Future generations will be able to get planting, nurturing, harvesting, and learning.
Why TCV?
At TCV, we are a group of tree planting enthusiasts! Through various tree planting initiatives, we have helped to increase the UK’s tree canopy in a bid to fight climate change and increase our biodiversity.
Our I Dig Trees tree planting programme, in partnership with OVO Energy, has planted over 1 million trees since 2015.
As a conservation charity that works with schools across the UK, we are ideally positioned to launch this initiative. We work with UK native tree suppliers to order and ship tree whips across the country in time for the prime planting season of November – March.
We are passionate about engaging the next generation of conservation heroes. It is important to us that they are equipped with the same knowledge and passion for the environment as we are.
By bringing the outdoors to the classroom, children will learn first-hand about the small things they can do to protect their planet.
To find out more about ICAP Charity Day, visit their website here.
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