Karino AyakoSustainably protecting the Earth’s environment is not something you can do overnight. Decades of hard effort across multiple generations is needed to truly make it happen. It’s important that the children of today understand what needs to be done to save the planet. Leaders of the future can’t take action if they don’t know what’s going on now. Tokyo-based company Ashitaba Mind believes this and wants to do something about it.
At the several Ashitaba Nursery Schools that the company runs, they are implementing various initiatives that allow children to think about issues raised by the SDGs and experience them in a fun way. One of their schools, Ashitaba Okurayama-en in Yokohama, has set up an initiative for children to try their hands at composting to reduce food waste. From early July this year, the children have been turning their school lunch leftovers into nutritious compost. Children receive leftovers from the school lunchroom every day and put them in compost containers. They repeat this for two months and then leave it to ferment for three weeks before the leftovers are turned into nutritious compost. The completed compost is then used for growing vegetables the children plant. This whole experience allows children to learn about recycling resources.
Ashitaba Mind’s initiatives are not just limited to composting. They also have other interesting ideas that allow children to learn about the SDGs from a very young age. For example, the company holds talk sessions on topics related to the SDGs and its 17 Goals. In addition, their cross-cultural experience program “Ashitaba Door,” held across numerous Ashitaba nursery schools, introduces various SDGs stories about the world to their children.
For example, at Ashitaba Okurayama-en, the children learned about river pollution in Thailand and investigated how to make clean drinking water. The children ended up making filtration devices using plastic bottles filled with things like absorbent cotton, pebbles, and gravel, with which they conducted an experiment to filter muddy water.
Another example is the children’s involvement in the “Acorn Bank” project, held in Okawa Village in Kochi Prefecture, which asks people to collect acorns. When you collect 100 acorns, a tree is planted on your behalf in Okawa Village. In fall, nursery children collected lots of acorns, which they donated to Okawa Village, planting multiple trees.
Various efforts like these enable children to be aware of the SDGs from an early age. It might even become a school subject in the near future. Education is a crucial element for people to continue living on this planet.
