A Win for US Education and the Global Climate

For most Americans—and virtually all credible climate scientists—the reality of climate change is finally undeniable. However, educational science standards have not kept pace with evolving climate science; in fact, they have not been updated in the United States since 1996.

Two-thirds of students in the US report that they have not learned much about climate change.

Fortunately, that is about to change. After three years of consultation and research, the National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Achieve will unveil the Next Generation Science Standards this week. “For the first time, the proposed education standards identify climate change as a core concept for science curricula and focus on the relationship between that change and human activity,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

In the US, each state has the power to determine their educational priorities and accept or reject recommended standards. Experts anticipate that 40 states will choose to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards—a huge win for the field of education and the environment.

In the past, many states have been reluctant to teach climate literacy. It is now widely recognized that scientific evidence needs to be used to link knowledge, skills and actions to tackle climate change. With its impacts felt locally and internationally, educators are committed to strengthening society’s ability to understand changes in our environment.

The Rainforest Alliance’s Role

Because many educators lack the resources and knowledge to teach climate literacy, the Rainforest Alliance has been working to introduce teachers to our Climate Educator Guide since 2010. Developed in conjunction with Project Learning Tree, the free curriculum is available in English and Spanish and provides easy-to-use lessons for middle school students.

Through these lessons, pupils learn climate science basics and discover how these concepts relate to the importance of reducing carbon emissions from deforestation. “In the community of Carmelita, Guatemala, we saw firsthand how environmental, social and economic concerns are interconnected with the day-to-day life of local people,” explains the Rainforest Alliance’s climate director Jeff Hayward. “Students learn how carbon credits can support communities who protect and manage forests sustainably while fighting climate change.”

In addition to this free online Climate Educator Guide, the Rainforest Alliance provides in-person professional development and community training related to climate change domestically and internationally.

Now more than ever, we need leaders in education to ensure that students are prepared to use scientific evidence to make informed decisions and take responsible actions. Together, we can foster the development of climate literate nations that contribute to a sustainable future and a prosperous planet.

Learn how the Rainforest Alliance’s climate program is helping communities and business through training, certification and verification.

Students Stand Up for Sustainability at the United Nations

With flags from 193 countries bordering its New York headquarters, the United Nations is an indelible symbol of international efforts to create a peaceful, connected world—and the perfect location to showcase the Rainforest Alliance’s efforts to bring students and teachers closer to their local and global environments. In February, our education team was invited to present at a side meeting of the 51^st Session of the Commission for Social Development at the UN. They were joined by a group from the Rainforest Alliance’s longtime partner school, The Ann Street School in Newark, NJ, including teacher Teresa Barroqueiro and her former students Anika B., John O. and Daniel A. During the meeting, the students took the stage to discuss how their experiences with the Rainforest Alliance curricula had opened their eyes to other cultures, communities and the world around them.

Here, Anika and John reflect on their unique experience at the UN.

Anika B., 5^th Grade

I had heard that few people had the gifted opportunity to set foot into the majestic building that I stood in now–the United Nations building. I entered a green, lush room with the Rainforest Alliance group.  As I sat down, I felt ambivalent: I felt so nervous yet so confident.  It was my turn to speak and I felt my heart flutter like the flags outside.  I spoke about my most memorable experience video chatting with students in Guatemala the previous year.  They lived with nature harmoniously, working with it not against it.  I took pride in my country’s efforts to support this great purpose and I learned more about how fortunate we are.  Last year’s education theme was values, and my poster project portrayed the value of family and friendship.  My class held up their posters and we spoke to them in Spanish through an interpreter.  We saw the friendly faces in Guatemala embracing us, not only as fellow humans, but as new friends.

John O., 6^th Grade

Going to the United Nations to represent my school was a great experience.  Two years ago during my Fourth grade year I took part in the Rainforest Alliance and Creative Connections program. Here my teachers exposed us to the changing environment around the world and how we as young children can change our ways of living so we make a difference in the changing world. We exchanged art with a classroom in Guatemala that was also learning about the same issues we are dealing with.  We compared environments and realized we both had a lot in common, most importantly the world we share. Being picked to represent my school was a great honor.  While at the United Nations I really enjoyed how we were able to explore and see all the things that were gifts from other countries. The most memorable part for me was when I saw a painting that was a gift from Ecuador. Being of Ecuadorian nationality it made me feel proud to be represented in such an important place. Thank you for allowing me to experience this one in a life time opportunity.

Ready to learn more? Watch a short video highlighting our work with The Ann Street School and explore our Learning Site.

Thank You for a Wonderful 2012!

You make our work in sustainable agriculture, forestry, tourism, climate and education possible — and we’re so very grateful for your support. Here’s to an even better 2013!

Educating New York’s Youngest Citizens

Lindsay Clark – assistant for the Rainforest Alliance’s education team – writes about her experience introducing teachers and students to our new Early Education Activities.

Every day we are bombarded with different sights, smells, tastes, sounds and textures.  As adults, we often overlook many of the sensory experiences that form our understanding of the world around us.  But young children are guided by their senses and use them to learn more about places near and far.

With this in mind, the Rainforest Alliance’s education program developed its Early Childhood Activities in collaboration with Project Learning Tree to help instill a sense of curiosity, wonder and excitement in our youngest citizens. Through these lessons, students in pre-K learn about their own neighborhood with their five senses and use their new knowledge to begin to think about far away environments — such as the rainforest — and the sights and sounds they might discover there.

This fall I had the opportunity to work with early childhood educators from New York City’s Educational Alliance and ACS/CUNY’s Informal Childcare Program.  Together with NY Project Learning Tree, we led five workshops to reach over 50 educators and help them incorporate our robust and engaging early childhood curricula. During Rainforest Alliance-led workshops, we took a listening walk to a nearby park where we paid attention to the sounds of the neighborhood and distinguished the man-made noises (like people shouting and horns honking) from the natural sounds (like birds chirping and the wind blowing).  We created shape necklaces and explored the ways teachers can familiarize their students with shapes through both their natural world and the built environment around them.

During our walk we also collected leaves and demonstrated how teachers can begin to introduce their students to math concepts such as graphing and sorting.  We mixed coffee, sunflower seeds, dried flowers and other natural materials into paint and explored the different textures found in nature through painting. We also tried out different methods of integrating smells, textures, sounds and tastes into classrooms to bring to life various people and places. Finally, we had fun creating a healthy “tree” snack that will make students eager to try different types of food, such as pretzels, hummus, carrots and raisins.  Students can also take part in a tropical taste test, which introduces them to foods such as avocado and mango.

I always love participating in early childhood education workshop — the teachers are truly enthusiastic and eager to learn new and engaging methods of introducing their students to the world around them.  It’s thrilling to see the excitement in the teachers’ eyes as they think of all the ways they can use our materials with their students.

Learn more about our work in early education and introduce the kids in your life to our Kids Corner.

It’s National Sustainability in Education Week!

Join the celebration by sharing our comprehensive  conservation curriculum, engaging games, storybooks, forest facts, species profiles and other great resources with the students and teachers in your life!

Want to see our education program at work? Meet a few inspiring students and teachers who are using the Rainforest Alliance’s educational resources in Jacksonville, Florida!

 

The Women of Vietnam’s Central Highlands

Part III of a Vietnam travelogue from Dipika Chawla, our New York-based online communities coordinator.

The shade trees overhead provided welcome protection from the mid-morning sun as I joined about 100 farmers on a Robusta coffee farm in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. We were gathered for a NESCAFÉ Plan farmer training session, the first of six that will take place over the next year.

Phung Thi Huu, a lead farmer under the NESCAFÉ Better Farming Practices training program, talks to a group of 100 Vietnamese farmers about rejuvenation, grafting, pruning, harvesting and other topics relevant to the region.

Here, Phung Thi Huu — a petite, middle-aged woman who wielded her megaphone with natural confidence — easily commanded the attention of the large group of mostly male farmers as she spoke about rejuvenation, grafting, pruning, harvesting and other topics relevant to the region.  As a NESCAFÉ Plan participant and community leader, Huu had taken part in the NESCAFÉ Better Farming Practices (NBFP) training program earlier this year hosted with support from the Rainforest Alliance. She is now responsible for training and managing 90 farmers from her village, Cao Thang, in the Dak Lak province.

Afterwards, when the whole group sat down for lunch at the home of one of the farmers, Huu worked the crowd. She floated between different groups of people, joking, laughing comfortably and making sure everyone had a place to sit. At one point, I watched a farmer say something to her and saw her respond with a smile and a bashful, dismissive gesture. My interpreter learned over and said, “He was telling her what a great speaker she was today.”

Farmers listen attentively to Huu’s dynamic presentation.

After lunch, I sat down with Huu to talk about her experience as a coffee farmer. I learned that her family had once cultivated rice. Seeking a more profitable crop, they switched to coffee in 1989, and many families in the village soon followed suit.

According to Huu, who has been part of the NESCAFE Plan since 2011, the training has deepened her technical knowledge of coffee farming. For example, she now knows how to select better quality seedlings and how to determine the exact amount of fertilizer required without letting any go to waste.

Two other women farmers I spoke with during my trip, Phung Thi Ngoc Loan and Thi Huong Nguyen, identified pruning techniques as one of the most important topics covered during the training program.

Phung Thi Ngoc Loan, a farmer in Vietnam, says that through training ““we learned that if you don’t prune the coffee trees properly, there will be too many branches sucking all the nutrients from the soil, which reduces productivity later on.”

“We learned that if you don’t prune the coffee trees properly, there will be too many branches sucking all the nutrients from the soil, which reduces productivity later on,” explained Loan. “If you do prune properly, the tree will be healthier and produce more cherries.”

Loan said that the training showed her how to identify early symptoms of coffee disease and pest damage. She has also started a compost pile with readily available materials, such as coffee husks, that she can use as fertilizer — thereby allowing her to decrease her use of chemical fertilizers. She estimates that she has reduced her fertilizer expenses by 10 to 20 percent as a result of composting.

A dog stands on a coffee farm in Vietnam.

Reducing chemical use is a common theme in the program. In addition to reducing chemical fertilizers, all three farmers reported using less herbicide for weeding purposes. On her small 3.7-acre (1.5-hectare) farm, Nguyen has cut out herbicides altogether, relying solely on hand weeding. In doing so, she’s protecting her family’s health and keeping valuable insects that help to soften her soil.

The Nguyen family carries out all of the field work, except in the harvest season, when they may hire a few extra laborers.

I asked Nguyen if she had noticed any other differences in the natural environment. “There are more birds, because of the shade trees and because we’ve been using less chemicals,” she said.  “Actually, they’re very useful for catching small pests.”

A spread of dried coffee cherries.

The shade trees offer more than bird habitat. In the training, Nguyen learned how to more evenly disperse the shade trees on her farm to create a proper canopy, which protects the coffee plants, maintains humidity and limits the growth of weeds. Fruit-bearing shade trees (such as avocado, durian and lychee) provide an added bonus. “Some of the fruit we eat and the rest we can sell at the market for a bit of extra income,” said Nguyen.

For Nguyen and Loan, the transition to sustainable agriculture has been smooth.  “In general, none of the new techniques are too difficult to follow,” Loan said. “If I have a question, I can just ask my neighbors and imitate what they are doing.”

Indeed, the vast majority of the coffee farmers in the region are smallholders, and neighbors are more than willing to help each other and exchange advice. “Some of my neighbors didn’t participate in the earlier trainings,” recalled Loan. “So when I returned from the training, I taught them what I learned about grafting techniques. After seeing how beneficial it was, they decided to participate in the next session.”

Huu posed with her grandson on her coffee farm.

Huu, on the other hand, had a somewhat different perspective as a lead farmer responsible for formally passing on the information to the other farmers in her village. She identified cultural differences as an issue, since several of the farmers in Cao Thang belong to different ethnic groups. She found that the language barrier sometimes makes it difficult to communicate and the older generation can be more resistant to adopting unfamiliar modern practices. She noted, however, that the younger generation, regardless of ethnicity, is always eager to learn and picks up new techniques very quickly.

In the short time since she joined the NESCAFÉ Plan, Huu has already perceived noticeable benefits to her farm. Her yields are higher and her costs are reduced, and she is pleased with her family’s increased awareness. They have all improved their knowledge of coffee quality, sanitation, chemical safety and environmental impacts. This means a better farming business for generations to come.

All three women said they looked forward to participating in as many NESCAFÉ Plan training events as possible. “I am always trying to learn more,” said Loan. “Farmers always need to learn more.”

Read part I and II of Dipika’s Vietnam travelogue.

A Sustainable Future for Vietnam

Dipika Chawla, our New York-based online communities coordinator, shares stories from her recent trip to meet with coffee farmers in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam.

As my plane descended into Buon Ma Thuot, the capital of Dak Lak province, I peered down at the rectangular plots of coffee plants stretching neat and green across the fertile landscape.  Three flights and two days after leaving New York City, I’d finally landed in Vietnam’s “capital of coffee,” known for decades as the heart of Vietnam’s flourishing coffee industry.

Vietnam has a vibrant coffee culture.

Accompanying me was Pham Tuong Vinh, Vietnam country coordinator for the Rainforest Alliance’s sustainable landscapes team. During the car ride from the airport to our hotel, Vinh pointed out the multitude of cafés populating every street. Though the average consumer in the West may not immediately associate Vietnam with coffee, this Southeast Asian nation boasts a vibrant coffee culture and is actually the second largest coffee exporter in the world. It is also the number one exporter of Robusta coffee, a variety that is cheaper to produce, more disease-resistant and stronger in flavor and caffeine content than the Arabica variety favored by most Western coffee drinkers.

Such a huge share of the world’s coffee production means that positive changes made in Vietnam resonate globally—making the Rainforest Alliance’s work here tremendously significant. Over a meal of curried chicken and fried rice with fish sauce, I got the chance to speak with Vinh about the Rainforest Alliance’s efforts to transform Vietnam’s coffee industry. “The national government wants 20 percent of Robusta coffee production to be certified as sustainable by 2016,” she said. “There are already five companies in Vietnam that own Rainforest Alliance Certified^TM coffee farms, and we expect that number to grow.”

Pham Tuong Vinh is the Vietnam country coordinator for the Rainforest Alliance’s sustainable landscapes team.

One of the Rainforest Alliance’s most important collaborations in Vietnam is with NESCAFÉ, Nestlé’s line of instant coffee and one of the largest coffee brands in the world. For more than a decade, NESCAFÉ and the Rainforest Alliance have worked together on coffee farms to define advanced farm management practices and improve the livelihoods of farmers. The Rainforest Alliance’s experienced agricultural specialists are working alongside Nestlé’s agronomists, the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) and 4C (Common Code for the Coffee Community) to combine traditional farmer wisdom with modern science to give farmers new tools and techniques so that they can succeed in their quest for sustainability.

In addition to working with coffee growers, the Rainforest Alliance is also promoting sustainable practices on tea farms that cover more than 328,000 acres (133,000 hectares) of land in Vietnam. In 2011, Vinh oversaw the training of 40 smallholders from tea estates in the north as well as the first certification of a Vietnamese tea company, Phu Ben. Our agriculture team aims to have 30,000 metric tons of tea grown on certified farms by 2015.

[From left to right] Dipika Chawla, our New York-based online communities coordinator, with a Vietnamese farmer.

The Rainforest Alliance has also adapted the SAN Standard to encompass the production of spices, including pepper. Vietnam, along with India, Indonesia and Madagascar, has been chosen as a location to implement the first phase of this project. The standard addresses a number of widespread problems in the pepper farming industry, including soil and water conservation, protection of workers, responsible waste management and the prohibition of dangerous pesticides and genetically modified organisms. In March 2012, the Rainforest Alliance completed an adaptation of these guidelines for pepper farming in Vietnam.

While we are making progress, transforming the agricultural sector in Vietnam is not without its challenges. According to Vinh, it has been difficult to change attitudes toward agrochemical use. “Farmers traditionally use a lot of chemicals in their fertilizer and for pest and weed control,” she said. “They even use paraquat, which is known to cause serious neurological damage.”

A coffee farmer stands among her cherries.

As most of Vietnam’s coffee is produced on small family farms between two and three acres (one and two hectares) in size, much of the field work is done by family members. Consequently, issues involving worker health hit, quite literally, close to home. As part of the Rainforest Alliance training program,  Vinh educates farmers about the dangers of certain chemicals and trains them to use safer techniques, such as applying a combination of less harmful agrochemicals and organic compost as fertilizer, employing Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques instead of resorting to heavy pesticide use, and partially or fully replacing herbicides with hand and machine weeding. (The Sustainable Agriculture Network standards allow for some limited, rigorously controlled agrochemicals and strictly prohibit all chemicals listed on the Dirty Dozen list of the Pesticide Action Network North America as well as those banned by the USDA and the European Food and Drug Administration.) Farmers must keep a log of all purchases and applications of permitted chemicals, and the Rainforest Alliance provides ongoing training and assistance to help farmers continue to reduce their use of agrochemicals.

Vinh recalled a conversation with one particular tea farmer, about a year after she had been trained by the Rainforest Alliance. “She told me that she’s so happy with how clean her farm is now that they are properly dealing with waste,” said Vinh. “She said people have taken notice of how beautiful her farm looks with all of the shade trees and lack of waste. She’s also happy that her family’s health is being protected, as they’ve stopped using SAN-prohibited pesticides and learned how to use personal protective equipment while using chemicals.”

Although the Rainforest Alliance has only been working in Vietnam for a few years, nearly 50,000 acres (20,000 hectares) of its farmland have already been certified. “We are very young in Vietnam,” Pham said, “But I think step by step, we are contributing to changing the landscape of the agricultural sector.”

The Chavarría Sisters on Working Toward Cattle Certification

The Chavarría sisters, who are working toward Rainforest Alliance certification on their cattle farm, discuss the process of implementing the Sustainable Agriculture Network Standard. Among their biggest challenges: educating workers about the importance of certification and the benefits of composting.

Creative Connections

At the end of each school year, the Rainforest Alliance education team connects students from our US partner schools with students living in the tropical rainforest in an art exchange.  This year, 16 US classes and 35 Guatemalan classes participated in our arts exchange. Here, Lindsay Clark, a member of our education team, writes about the art exchanges she attended in Newark, NJ and Brooklyn, NY*.

Facilitated by our wonderful friends at Creative Connections, students in 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th grade at  Ann Street School in Newark, NJ and P.S. 67 and P.S. 15 in Brooklyn, NY created individual pieces of art that reflected an important aspect of their community, culture or life.  They sent their artwork to their counterparts in the tropical rainforest of Guatemala and eagerly awaited the arrival of artwork from their new Latin American friends.

Once the Guatemalan students’ artwork  arrived, they examined the pieces closely and discussed the differences and similarities between their  own work and the art they had received from their new Guatemalan friends.  Then, they prepared for a conversation with the Guatemalan students via videoconference.

On the morning of the videoconferences, the classes buzzed with excitement. Students were eager to meet their new friends, and were clearly thrilled when a screen popped up featuring a room filled with equally excited kids in Guatemala! They were so happy to have the opportunity to learn more about each other’s communities, families and cultures.

One student from Ann Street School in New Jersey asked, “What does your school look like?” He  was shocked to hear that students in Guatemala studied in a simple one-floor building with four classrooms and only 100 students.  When asked the same, his New Jersey class explained that their school had four floors and 1300 students!

In Brooklyn, a student at P.S. 15 brought a drawing up to the camera and asked, “What is this [pointing to an object in the drawing]?” A Guatemalan student explained that it was a marimba, a traditional instrument made from a very special wood that can only be found in the rainforest. The Brooklyn students compared it to an instrument they are familiar with, the xylophone.

Ultimately, the students learned that they had much in common: they share a love of family, do chores after school, play soccer and basketball, and enjoy hanging out with friends.

And while U.S. students were inquisitive about the “magical” rainforest in Guatemala, students in Guatemala were equally eager to learn about life in a big city. Despite the fact that the students were separated by thousands of miles, their love and desire to protect the environment both at home and afar was evident.

Visit our Learning Site to learn more about the Rainforest Alliance’s work with students of all ages.

*Creative Connections also facilitated exchanges in Jacksonville, FL, which Clark did not attend.

Students Work Together to Clean Up Their Local Environment

Ms. Harter and some of her 4th grader students clean up the riverbank in Blue Cypress Park.

Earlier this year, Lindsay Clark – a member of the Rainforest Alliance’s education team—had an opportunity to travel to Jacksonville, Florida to join the 4^th grade class from Susie E. Tolbert Elementary for a river clean up with St. Johns Riverkeeper. She writes…

Along the marshy edge of the St. Johns River, fiddler crabs scurry across the sand and tall grass.  Excited shouts and peals of laughter fill the air as the class dodges small crustaceans and cleans up litter along this beautiful riverbank.

Flowing through the middle of Jacksonville, Florida is the lovely St. Johns River – the largest river in the state and one of the few US rivers that flows north!  One of my favorite parts of working with the Rainforest Alliance’s education program is being able to provide our partner schools with unique opportunities that expose their students to new and eye-opening experiences.

On this beautiful, hot Florida day, I joined Ms. Harter’s class at Blue Cypress Park to help them clean up their own local environment. Armed with gloves and garbage bags, students took conservation action into their own hands and began walking along the marshy river edge to clean up litter and debris left behind by previous visitors.  Their enthusiasm was contagious as they compared their finds, competed to locate the most unusual objects and talked about how this garbage ended up on the riverbank.  They were all bothered that people would carelessly leave garbage in and around the river, hurting the plant and animal populations that depend on it. It was an extra-special trip for some students in the group, who had never before been to the St. John’s River.

After scouring the riverbank for trash, the students gathered around Greg Nagel – education program director at St. John’s Riverkeeper – to discuss what they found and speculate about how these items ended up on the riverbank and in the surrounding park. They also talked about the different ways that they can help to protect the St. Johns River, keeping it beautiful and clean. 

Following a long morning of cleaning up the park, the students rested under the shade of nearby trees to eat their lunches and talk about the day’s adventures.  Then they piled into their yellow school buses, ready to head back to the classroom where they would conduct a follow-up lab and learn about the leachates that can flow from trash into rivers and soil.  The follow-up lab will help the students to better understand the damage that litter can do to surrounding ecosystems.

A volunteer from St. Johns Riverkeeper teaching the students about the local fiddler crab.

It was such an exciting day, and I was so happy to have had the opportunity to help these students clean-up their community.  It was a treat to see childrens’ faces light up as they explored the riverbank, got up close and personal with the little fiddler crabs, and took action to make their community healthier and more beautiful for the people and animals depending on it.

Watch a new video to learn more about the Rainforest Alliance’s work with 16 partner schools in Duvall County, Florida.