The Wilderness Foundation will be hosting students from Felsted Preparatory School this week as part of the Citizenship Week held annually in school.
The first sessions the charity will be providing at its 400 acre Chatham Green site this week include quadrat surveying of the grass meadow and the new wildflower meadow, with pupils noting differences in plant frequency between the two sites, as well as distribution of the plants identified within the meadow. Later, Year 7 students participate in invertebrate surveys (minibeast hunts) and will identify the most-frequently occurring invertebrates on the farm today.
This afternoon Year 6 pupils are working to achieve their Leave No Trace Awareness award with LNT Instructor and WF Staff member Helen Payne. The group walked some seven miles from school to the site before enjoying lunch in the woods, followed by the start of their LNT course. The Wilderness Foundation embraces the seven principles of Leave No Trace and they are embedded in all the outdoor programmes the charity delivers, both here at home and further afield in the wilderness areas of Southern Africa.
Richard Corby, leading the Felsted School experience week for the Wilderness Foundation said:
We are delighted to welcome pupils from Felsted back to Chatham Green. For those Year 6 pupils who visited us last year, there is a very noticeable difference in the how the site has evolved since they were last with us – both in terms of the facilities that we are providing but also how the natural environment is growing and changing, in line with the management plan that has been implemented for the farm. One student said to me earlier ‘This is so different now. It’s just gone wild’. We actively encourage our visitors to do that too – get outside, connect with their natural environment, discover it, explore it and enjoy it. Each visitor that comes to us to learn, has the potential to be an environmental steward for the future. All are welcome.”
The Chatham Green Project is a conservation and education initiative on 400 acres of farmland in the heart of Essex. Focused on sustainable land use, the project investigates how we can utilise the land more effectively to better balance the 21st century needs of farming, nature and communities. Through this initiative, we aim to educate over 3,000 school aged pupils each year. In addition to this we operate an environmental monitoring programme to record the changes in the land over time.
Our education programme offers curriculum linked experiential learning sessions to all key stages. We plan a tailored session for your group to deliver key objectives whilst discussing the wider issues addressed by the project. For further information or to book a visit please email us or give the education team a call on 0300 123 3073.
