Black2Nature- Empowering Children, Enriching Lives

Black2Nature

Black2Nature fights for equal access to nature for all, a right that we believe is fundamental in the same way we all have the right to access education or health. This is important because everybody should have the benefit of being able to go out into green or natural spaces, not just for their enjoyment but also for good mental and physical wellbeing. 

Vulnerable and disadvantaged minority ethnic children and teenagers are particularly at risk of entering foster care, prison or the mental health system. For example, minority ethnic teenagers are twice as likely as their White counterparts to be diagnosed with a mental illness through contact with the criminal justice system rather than it being picked up by their school, GP or Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). 

Our vision for Black2Nature is that our early intervention will get visible minority ethnic (VME) children, teens and families out into nature on a regular basis, giving them resilience to physical and mental illness.

Black2Nature urgently needs your help and support to raise vital funds so that we can continue our important work.

Your donations will help us to: 

• Continue running nature camps for up to 30 young people at each camp;
• Keep our activities FREE for all participants, removing barriers to access to nature;
• Provide transport FREE for those who need it;
• Reduce isolation within marginalised communities;
• Improve physical and mental well-being for all participants;
• Break barriers and create community cohesion.

Nature engagement for the benefit of physical and mental health and attainment gap – environmental engagement including biodiversity & climate

Black2nature was set up by young British-Bangladeshi birder, environmentalist, and activist, Mya-Rose Craig AKA Birdgirl. She started her campaign ten years ago and promotes its work as President. She spent her childhood birding with her family, but never saw anyone who looked like them. This was her lightbulb moment when she realised that she had to give access to nature to Visible Minority Ethnic communities, engaging them with nature by making nature relevant and helping them care about the planet.

Black2Nature organises nature camps and events, schools talks, works with the conservation and environmental sectors to help them to become more diverse including organising conferences with activists such as Chris Packham and Gillian Burke. The charity is based in Bristol but aims to have a national reach with 2024 events including in the New Forest, Oxfordshire, Midlands and Pembrokeshire.

How Black2Nature began

When Mya-Rose was 13, she read an article about nature camps for teenagers in America, which excited her. However, she wondered why there weren't any birdwatching camps for teenagers at that time in the UK.  When she talked to her parents, they suggested that she organised one herself. So, that is what Mya-Rose did. She organised her first nature camp, mainly with bird related activities such as bird ringing, bird photography and sketching, along with other activities that she wanted to try. Being a teenager, she felt sure that others her age would enjoy them too. These activities included camp cooking, toasting marshmallows and looking at moths.

A few months later, she had twelve young people booked onto her camp. However, she realised that all the teenagers booked on were affluent, White and boys.  It was at this point that she realised that she had got things wrong and that it was important that the teenagers who attended  should be from different ethnicities, areas of deprivation and representing her communities. Mya-Rose, who was still only 13 years old, decided that she was going to find young marginalised inner-city people to come to her camp, so used her contacts within Bristol’s minority ethnic communities and eventually managed to find five VME boys to attend.

When they arrived, the boys had no idea what to expect but had a fun packed first evening, cooking on the BBQ, playing football and camping. The following morning, the VME teenagers were up early at 6 am to go birdwatching. Instead of getting dressed quickly like the others, they were in the toilets putting gel on their hair and getting ready for their day out, as they would for city life.

When we got to the nature reserve, the VME boys were initially tired and not happy.  It was only a ten minute walk to get to the first bird watching platform, when they were relieved that could sit down.  The other boys were already looking through their telescopes excitedly at seeing birds like bittern and garganey.  The minority ethnic boys looked around and said “oh, this is pretty”, they sat down and that was it, that was their engagement with the landscape.  They looked really bored and Mya-Rose was wondering what she was going to do, as at that moment it seemed like the whole camp idea was a huge mistake. 

It was then that one of the young volunteers started to talk to the boys about the speed of Peregrine Falcons. He compared the speed at which they dropped using gravity before they go for the kill to a Formula One race car. It was at that moment that those five inner-city boys connected with nature.  Nature had been made to be something they could relate to. They were mesmerised and interested in what they were hearing, nature was made relevant.

That is still our approach, to find a way to make nature relevant for every young person who attends our camps.

After this moment the camp was easy, they were engaged and loved all of it.  This was the moment when Mya-Rose realised this was the key, that if you don’t have a way of understanding what nature is about, how can you enjoy it or protect it. She came up with the idea of nature by stealth, meaning that if people think that nature is boring, then you need to engage them with activities that they find interesting e.g. film making.

The injustices we are trying to address

Black2Nature addresses the lack of access to nature with its benefits, focussing on Visible Minority Ethnic families who are impacted by racism and poverty and who are taken out into green spaces 20% less each week less compared to White middle-class children. We believe free access to nature is a human right, in the same way as the right to education or health. 

Visible Minority Ethnic communities often live in deprived inner-city areas where green spaces are degraded. They suffer from higher rates of and more serious mental illness, a large educational attainment gap. We also educate young people to fight to stop biodiversity loss and climate change alongside global climate justice.

What Black2Nature hopes to achieve

Achieve a society where everyone but especially Visible Minority Ethnic children have free access to nature and are engaged and educated to understand environmental issues allowing them to become environmental activists fighting climate change and biodiversity loss. Improving mental health and education; enabling participation in society as mature and responsible individuals, making a difference.

Achieve an environmental sector that engages with Visible Minority Ethnic people, by cultivating a sentiment of equality and diversity, eliminating discrimination and focussing on improving ethnic diversity within their workforces.

Impact 

The most vulnerable and deprived VME children and young people (living in the 10% poorest wards), their parents, families, asylum seekers, refugees and their wider communities would have their human rights protected.

The teenagers attending the camps and events will be from the most vulnerable and deprived communities in the UK (living in the 10% poorest wards). Evaluation will be done through carrying out a survey of the teenagers at the beginning and end, as well as making video interviews. 

The positive impact will extend to parents, families, teachers, school friends and their wider communities. We see the children and teenagers return home uplifted and sharing their fantastic experiences. We will have conversations with parents before the camp as part of the recruitment process, which will ripple out to the whole community who will learn the value of nature and the importance of environmental issues such as climate change in their countries of ethnicity.

The teenagers will learn about using nature for mental health resilience, which will have significant long-term positive impact on their mental and physical health. We have run many camps since 2015, learning and adapting over the years. We have had a 100% success rate in getting young people engaged and connected with nature.

This Year

This year has been the busiest so far for Black2Nature.  So far we have run approx. 40 day events, 10 nature camps including our largest ever for 190 young people. We also a conference and held other projects.  

Black2Nature aims to provide a wide range of activities. Just a few examples from this year include tree planting, bird-ringing, trips to Bristol Zoo & Slimbridge, surfing, activities at Mendip Activity Centre.  All activities are based around nature and the outdoors.

Longer term, a childhood interest for nature can lead to developing a career in the environmental or nature film-making sector which has a huge number of jobs in Bristol, however VME people currently represent just 0.6% of the sector’s workforce.  This is thousands of Bristol jobs which exclude VME people.  

With a combination of primary age and teenage nature camps, we will be working to remove barriers, seeking to boost their confidence which in turn will increase the likelihood of those who take part seeking different opportunities for themselves and increasing employability in sectors under represented by the VME demographic.

Black2Nature urgently needs your help and support to raise vital funds so that we can continue our important work.