GREEN KINDERGARTENS IN UPPER EGYPT
How to foster environmental care and stewardship in Egypt? Funded by the US Forest Service International Programs, GEBAL started the journey with young children. We worked in partnership with the Dandara Cultural Center to turn three of the CBO’s kindergartens in Dandara, Upper Egypt, into “Green Kindergartens”. As part of this project, one kindergarten received a courtyard garden equipped with a green play space and green walls.
To ensure that the teaching and learning in the green kindergartens creates environmental awareness and an appreciation for nature, GEBAL produced a practical play and activity guide called the The Young Naturalist. The guide for kindergarten teachers provides inspiration for a catalogue of games, handicraft activity, and scientific experiments that bring children in direct contact with nature. It includes activities that inspire all senses, encourage exploring, touching, and sensing nature, and that encourage children to engage with nature in playful ways.
TRAINING LOCAL EDUCATORS ON CREATIVE NATURE TEACHING
GEBAL organized a hands-on training of trainers in Dandara for teachers of different kindergartens. The event brought together teachers, consultants, and community members to transform the educational experience of young children in the community. Drawing on the Young Naturalist manual, they demonstrated how everyday classroom activities can build children’s appreciation and respect for the environment. The workshop included making nature based bangles, crowns, name plates, creating shapes of salt dough, making recycled paper, practicing simple science and colour experiments, and many other activities. The Heiz Heroes Comic in ARABIC and ENGLISH and the El Heiz Teaching Module – Arabic and El Heiz Teaching Module – English about environmental history, climate change, and water scarcity in Egypt’s desert was also used as a creative teaching guide.
GEBAL trainers discussed what makes a green kindergarten special, what code of ethics should drive local teaching, what everyday practices can distinguish the kindergarten from others, and how the courtyard garden might be included in everyday teaching and learning. The kindergartens will try to avoid single use plastic, practice garbage separation at the source, promote healthy diets, and foster a culture of water and energy saving. GEBAL also encouraged teachers to playfully include environmental song and dance into the curriculum.
HANDS-ON LEARNING IN THE COMMUNITY GARDEN
An additional green education and play space is the local community and biodiversity garden GEBAL established with funding from the US Forest Service in Dandara. In the garden, teachers learned how outdoor spaces can become living classrooms. Participants collected leaves and flowers for creative projects, walked barefoot across textured materials in a “senses walk,” and made nature bangles. These hands-on experiences showed how simple, joyful activities can inspire environmental stewardship. Participants also collected leaves, flowers, twigs, and grass to create art projects during subsequent handicraft activities at the kindergarten. The participants left the training with renewed enthusiasm to make their kindergartens greener, more creative, and deeply connected to nature.
BUILDING A CULTURE OF STEWARDSHIP
Following the Training of Trainers, the Dandara Cultural Center’s kindergarten teachers delved right into the green kindergarten curriculum. The following week, children already built a miniature “oasis,” inspired by the El Heiz Heroes comic story. This activity symbolised the deeper goal of the training: nurturing children as guardians of their environment.
A group of school children visiting the Community and Biodiversity Garden in Dandara also benefited from the new curriculum. The young visitors carried out hands-on, nature-expired activities in the garden. They created nature crowns and engaged in gardening work, creating an immediate connection with the green space.
The garden is also a food forest that is reaping its first eatable crops. Visitors get to touch and taste fruit growing on one of the over 10 types of fruit trees grown in the garden. The garden’s herb spiral and garden invite visitors to smell and taste local herbs and to collect herbs to take home.
WHERE ENVIRONMENTAL CARE BEGINS
GEBAL always takes pride in designing and implementing inclusive project components and activities that nurture children’s understanding of the environment from their earliest years, building a foundation for lifelong respect and care for our beloved environment.
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