Nurture via Nature: Hong Kong Nature Connectedness and Outdoor Environmental Education

With climate change being a serious environmental problem along with the pandemic in recent years, social sustainability and human well-being faced loads of critical challenges. Yet, we strongly believe that connecting with nature is crucial for environmental education and children’s physical and mental health.

Supported by the Swire Group Charitable Trust, Hong Kong Maritime Museum (HKMM) is honoured to be the Strategic Education Partner of Outdoor Wildlife Learning Hong Kong (OWLHK) to support the new project “Nurture via Nature: Hong Kong Nature Connectedness and Outdoor Environmental Education”! The project will include the FIRST Hong Kong territory-wide baseline survey for “children nature connectedness” and “outdoor environmental education in primary school”. Together with a series of work on publicity and advocacy, different stakeholders in the society would get an insight into the significance of connecting with nature, as well as drive the development of outdoor environmental education as a whole for the sake of the well-being of Hong Kong citizens, especially in children.

Three main parts in the project include:

1. A collaboration with Prof. Kevin Tam (Associate Professor in the Division of Social Science at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) to conduct a baseline survey for Hong Kong children nature connectedness and baseline empirical survey for the utilization of outdoor environmental education in primary schools 2.Provision of outdoor education opportunities for partner schools under quasi-experimental research design, to demonstrate effective education approaches in raising nature connectedness

3. Work on publicity, advocacy and co-construction on Hong Kong children’s nature connectedness and outdoor environmental education, including "Connecting with Nature Pledge", “Hong Kong Outdoor Education Month”, thematic sharing, international conference and research publications, etc. Some activities will be held at HKMM.

With the great support from all the partner organizations, a new expedition has just started! Please stay tuned and let’s engage with nature!

Program details:

https://nature.owlhk.org/en/index