Communities Fund has provided £1,082 of match funding
How to Grow a Goat: Help Kids Grow Up Outdoors!
Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom
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Aim
Want kids to grow up healthier, happier, kinder - and enjoying themselves outdoors more? Us too!
How to Grow a Goat is a free app for parents, grandparents, carers, teachers and communities, packed with daily ideas to get kids outside and doing things.
We’re crowdfunding to reach more families through schools and communities, bring the app to Android and the web, and create lots more activities.
Things like:
- How far can you get without being seen by a bird?
- Sniff ten trees. Which smells best?
- Check in on the same spider each day to see how it is
- Go outside. How many smells can you see or hear?
- Use blackberries to paint your fingertips
- Chalk a poem for pangolins
- Visit a nature reserve you've never been to before
- Trade something that was going to be thrown out
This is an anti-app app! Open the app. Find something worth doing. Put the phone away.
Some prompts are wonderfully absurd. Others are more purposeful. They all help goats grow.
There are activities for every stage of childhood - from bump to big kid, with plenty for older goats too. Most are quick, playful and easy to try, while others are bigger adventures.
They help build confidence, curiosity and creativity, while encouraging kids to notice, enjoy and care for the world around them.
There are only 216 months of childhood. We shouldn't try to fill every second, but sometimes a good idea at the right moment can give a child one more way to grow.
No points. No leaderboards. No pressure. Just prompts to get things started.
We already have a working iPhone app, built and being tested by our team.
Every activity will be made and reviewed by real human beings from our expert team of parents, teachers, play workers and kids.
Now we need the herd.
We want to grow what we've already built into something many more families can discover, enjoy and grow up with - and we'd love your help with that.
We're not kidding around
This app is not just about growing goats. It's about growing healthy, happy and kind kids that enjoy being outdoors.
On each activity, we highlight at least one important benefit of doing it. Things like:
Be active. Discover. Take notice. Give. Connect. Be creative.
The first five are inspired by NEF’s evidence-based 5 Ways to Wellbeing, which are widely used by the NHS. We’re adding some of our own - like being creative - because they’re great for wellbeing, learning and growth too.
As well as working on their own, in the background we’ll be making sure there’s progression between activities - across weeks, months and years.
No single activity is going to transform a childhood. But lots of small experiences can add up to something much bigger.
A five-minute challenge can spark curiosity. An afternoon adventure can build confidence. Helping someone can develop kindness. Making something can encourage creativity.
Lots of ways to grow. One activity at a time.
Open the app. Open the door.
How to Grow a Goat is designed to get children away from screens - not keep them on one.
Choose an activity. Do it today, save it for later, change it, repeat it or ignore it completely.
Most activities don't need money, special knowledge, equipment or a carefully planned expedition. A tree, a pavement, a sunset or a surprisingly good stick may be enough.
The app provides the spark. What happens next belongs to the goats!
What makes it different?
There are plenty of brilliant activity books and idea banks already. We know - Dan Raven-Ellison in our team helped create award-winning kids' activity books, including Mission and the Nat Geo Kids Mission: Animal Rescue book series.
How to Grow a Goat does things a little differently:
- Free - the app and its activities will be available to families for free
- Human - activities are created and reviewed by real people who understand childhood, play, learning and wellbeing
- Goats of all ages - including prompts for parents to do with goats yet to be born, right through to bigger adventures for older kids.
- An anti-app app - open it, choose an idea, put the phone away and get going
- Original - expect ideas you have never seen, heard or sniffed before
- Progressive - activities can grow alongside children, from early discoveries to bigger, braver and more independent adventures
- No assumptions - you decide which activities are best for you
- Shared - families can take part together, bringing parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends and other grown-ups into the adventure
- Culture creating - lots of families can try the same activities while every child makes them their own, giving everyone something to talk about
There are no streaks, no leaderboards and no pressure to keep up.
There is no wrong way to be a goat.
Free for every goat
We want all kids to be able to enjoy and benefit from How to Grow a Goat.
That's why families won't need to make a pledge to use it.
Backing this campaign doesn't buy app access for you or for another family.
Instead, your pledge helps fund the work that makes the project possible: working with experts to create and review activities, improving the app, increasing accessibility and reaching families through schools and communities.
We believe schools are one of the best ways to reach families who might otherwise never hear about How to Grow a Goat.
At our current costs, around £1 enables us to contact one school about the app.
We'll particularly focus our outreach on communities where children are more inactive or have less access to nature.
The more we raise, the more development and outreach we can do.
And the more schools we can contact, the greater the opportunity for families to discover How to Grow a Goat and find something worth doing outside together.
What will your support fund?
Your support will help us:
- deliver daily activity ideas to kids and goats across the country
- create more activities for different ages, abilities and settings
- bring together people with expertise in childhood, play, wellbeing and education to create and review them
- share useful ideas around childhood wellbeing and development
- develop Android and website versions alongside the iPhone app we've already built
- test and improve the apps and make them increasingly inclusive
- reach families through schools and communities
- contact schools directly to introduce them to How to Grow a Goat
- focus outreach on places where children are more inactive or have less access to nature
We've already built the first version. Now we need your help to turn it into something thousands of families can discover and enjoy.
Our ambition is to create something that grows alongside a child - from bump and early muddy discoveries to bigger, braver and more independent adventures.
And if it really works?
Eventually, families won't need the app.
They'll find things to do, places to explore, people to meet and adventures to invent for themselves.
What if we contacted every school in the UK?
Imagine if thousands of schools heard about the app and shared this opportunity with their community. We can make that happen.
At our current outreach costs, around £1 enables us to contact one school - helping them share How to Grow a Goat with parents, carers and staff, so more families can discover and use the app for free.
So £10 gives us the capacity to contact around 10 schools. £50, around 50. £250, around 250.
Through those schools, many more families can discover simple, inspiring things to do outside together.
Pledges contribute to the overall project: developing the app, creating and reviewing activities and carrying out our school and community outreach.
The app will be free for families whether or not they have backed this campaign.
Inspired by kids. Made by parents and childhood experts.
Little by little, kid by kid, idea by idea - that's how you grow a goat.
Match funding!
How to Grow a Goat is part of The Aviva Foundation's climate match fund on Crowdfunder.
That means your first pledge can be matched, up to £250. So if you give £10, the project can receive £20. If you give £100, the project can receive £200.
That extra funding helps us do more of the work this campaign is raising money for: creating and reviewing activities, developing the app and extending our outreach through schools and communities.
The fund supports projects helping communities adapt to climate change, including restoring nature, improving access to green spaces and providing education and skills for a sustainable future.
Lots of the activities on How to Grow a Goat encourage children to get outside, notice nature, explore their local environment and develop a relationship with the world around them.
If you read some of the activities above again, you might just see how!
What if more kids did more of these kinds of activities on a regular basis throughout their childhoods? Let's make that happen!
A little thank-you from the herd
Our Crowdfunder rewards are simply our way of saying thank you for helping make the project happen.
Depending on your pledge, they include things like a Founding Goat profile badge in the app, 100 printed How to Grow a Goat activities for your fridge, optional supporter credits and opportunities to get involved in the world of the goats.
The rewards are separate from access to the app. How to Grow a Goat remains free whether you back us or not.
Who's making this happen?
How to Grow a Goat is created by Good Ways, the app has been built in the UK by Good Binary and activities are being reviewed by the outdoor play experts at Outdoor People.
Our growing team includes children, parents, grandparents and educators, supported by people with experience in childhood, play, wellbeing and learning.
Good Ways is a nonprofit Community Interest Company. We help people of all ages to be active, explore, connect and grow - for the benefits that can bring to our lives, communities, nature and the planet.
The Good Ways app and platform makes it easier for everyone to find and enjoy walking, running, cycling, wheeling, riding and paddling routes.
How to Grow a Goat brings that spirit to childhood with good ways to be active, curious and outdoors, from the very beginning.
Because the best way to create activities for real families is to involve real families.
Join the herd
If you want the kids you love to grow up spending more time exploring, playing, noticing, making and doing things outdoors, please back How to Grow a Goat.
Your pledge helps us build the project and helps us take it out into the world — one school at a time.
Help us get it out into the world - and help more kids get out into theirs.
Less scrolling. More exploring.
The world outside is enormous.
Let's goat explore it, one activity at a time.
Funding method
All or nothing – this project will only receive pledges if it reaches its target of £10,000 by 22nd October 2026 at 3:50pm