You can’t help but be inspired by the story of a young Englishwoman who, at the age of 24 in 1960, made her way to Africa to study chimpanzees. Today, Jane Goodall continues to inspire people around the world with her wildlife education and conservation efforts. Those efforts include her Roots and Shoots program, a perfect fit for homeschoolers who want to make a difference.
Our mission is to empower young people to affect positive change in their communities. You can help build a better tomorrow. It starts right here. Right now.
RootsandShoots.org
This service-learning program encourages student groups to take a look at their community and identify issues that they feel are important relating to humans, animals, or the environment. The projects are defined by the students and then led by the students.
Why I Love This Program
We’ve been doing an annual Roots and Shoots project since 2014 and I love it for two reasons – it’s student-led and it works really well for our multi-age homeschool group. There are always opportunities for children as young as three and four to help out and our older students are able to take on leadership roles.
We start each year in February and follow the Roots and Shoots model. The online training available for educators helps establish the parameters for students to generate ideas and narrow them down to one. Over the past seven years, our students have come up with some amazing and inspiring ideas. Out of all of them though, I think this is my favorite:
“I think we should put the antlers back on the deer after they fall off.”
From a 6 year-old Roots and Shoots participant
Wouldn’t that be an awesome project? Assuming we had cooperative deer and whatever permits were required. 🙂
Once they choose their topic, the students steer the project. They determine how they want to address the issues. We adults might give them a few ideas but they have the final say. Quite often, they come up with brilliant ideas on their own. And then we all get to work.
While we’ve never put antlers back on deer, we have picked up hundreds of pounds of trash in area parks, planted thousands of seeds for pollinators, cleaned up local waterways, raised awareness of the diversity of birds and other wildlife in our community, and more.
In the process, our homeschool group won four sustainability awards from the City of Lakewood. (Yes, the students knew they made a difference but it was also nice for them to get some official recognition for their efforts.)
How to Get Involved
Whether you’re local or not, our group would love to have your help. Last year, with all its Covid-ness, taught us how to use online meetings and tools to reach more people than ever before. We even had participants from as far away as Florida helping with our Colorado-based project. Pretty cool.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead
If you’re interested in helping our group, just fill out this contact form.
If you’re inspired to start your own Roots and Shoots project, go to RootsandShoots.org. It has everything you need to get your own successful program started.
There you go – Roots and Shoots, a perfect fit for homeschool students. A multi-age student-led opportunity for your children to make a positive difference in their community.
For more ideas on volunteering during Covid, see this post.