Love as the Root of Impactful Nature-Based Education with Sean Southey

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;42;26

Carrie Albright, NAAEE

Thanks for tuning in to The World We Want: The NAAEE Podcast, a project of the North American Association for Environmental Education. If this episode resonates with you, after the podcast, check out our website, which contains opportunities for professional development, resources for educators and administrators, and guidance on how you can incorporate environmental education into a broader teaching strategy. Visit us at NAAEE.org/podcast and thanks for listening.

 

00;00;42;29 - 00;01;09;05

Sean Southey

Our challenge is to find a way to get good education into every environment so everyone can be privy to it, and everyone can change the way they look at the world to advance themselves, their family and the environment they live in.

 

00;01;09;08 - 00;01;40;18

Gerry Ellis, Host

Hi, I'm Gerry Ellis, host of The World We Want: The NAAEE Podcast. Those were the words of my guest, Sean Southey. For Sean, nature-based education is more than a passion. Like the environment itself, it's a living vision. He is immersed in. He sees it as a world where every child has the opportunity to fall in love with nature, where classrooms venture beyond the four walls into forests, parks, wetlands and streams that surround them.

 

00;01;40;21 - 00;02;06;14

Gerry Ellis, Host

Where environmental education isn't just a subject squeezed into another hour in the week, but a way of communicating that transforms how we see ourselves and our place in the world. He is a thoughtful crusader for a more nature-based planet. It’s a path that began with the simple realization that if we want to change the world, we need to change our hearts first.

 

00;02;06;16 - 00;02;38;24

Gerry Ellis, Host

Sean Southey is the CEO of the Canadian Wildlife Federation, but he brings a unique perspective shaped by years of policy work as the chair of IUCN’s Commission on Education and Communication. That work deepened his understanding of how culture is formed and transforms our nature. Sean offers both a practical wisdom and inspiring hope for educators, parents, and anyone who believes in the power of connection to create a more sustainable and caring future.

 

00;02;38;26 - 00;02;48;17

Gerry Ellis, Host

My conversation with Sean reveals both the intimate and the systemic work required to build the world we want.

 

00;02;48;19 - 00;03;17;00

Gerry Ellis, Host

The World We Want Podcast is a production of NAAEE, the North American Association for Environmental Education. Learn more about our commitment to creating a more just and sustainable future, and connect with environmental educators from around the world by visiting our website at naaee.org. And now my conversation with Sean Southey. Hi, Sean, and welcome to The World We Want.

 

00;03;17;01 - 00;03;18;28

Sean Southey

It's an absolute pleasure to be here.

 

00;03;19;00 - 00;03;44;29

Gerry Ellis, Host

I wanted to start with, you have such a diverse background and you've done you have so many experiences and experienced so many things. Why environmental education, it’s of interest to me because it sounds like—when I did the research on you—it was like, it seemed to be social justice, social change. How does, most people would say, well, how does that link to environmental education?

 

00;03;45;01 - 00;04;11;17

Sean Southey

So I think each of us go through a different, elaborate journey to find the things we love. And I actually started as an environmental economist of all things, probably because my dad was a professor of economics, and it was very easy to me. But then I very quickly learned I didn't like economics, and I moved from economics into policy, which is that process of engaging people in complex decisions to get the best out of any situation.

 

00;04;11;22 - 00;04;38;01

Sean Southey

And I loved policy, but I was invited to join the UN, and I went to Africa and Malawi, and I lived in Malawi for two years. And I began to do environmental programing, still drawing on those same skills from policy work that allow you to talk to different people, hear them, listen to them, and push forward a thoughtful agenda that is good for the environment and good for people.

 

00;04;38;03 - 00;05;02;06

Sean Southey

But after a long time of doing this, I went, the UN is really beautiful, but they do sing to the choir a lot, and if we really want to change the world, we need to talk to everyday people and engage them in the work of looking at their context, their world, and fixing it themselves. So I became fascinated by culture.

 

00;05;02;09 - 00;05;38;03

Sean Southey

How is culture formed? How is culture made? And the deeper you go, the more you realize that culture is local. It's not national, it's not regional, it's not global. It's hyper local, and it's hugely informed by your family, your parents, your church, your mosque, your synagogue. But it's really informed by school, your education. And, you know, we know there's formal, informal and non formal education that each of these touches us and motivates us in different ways.

 

00;05;38;05 - 00;06;10;19

Sean Southey

But I became fascinated by the place that democratizes learning and that's formal education. And this place we live in now, which is our planet, is highly bubbled. You're in a cocoon of the messages of your community and those voices are totally divided. And people who are born into one bubble stay in that bubble. Education is the one place where we democratize learning, where we reach everyone with the same message.

 

00;06;10;22 - 00;06;25;15

Sean Southey

So to create a culture of conservation, a culture of education, a culture of environment and a culture of care, we need to be looking at the way we educate in all its many beautiful forms.

 

00;06;25;18 - 00;06;53;25

Gerry Ellis, Host

Now you've got me going off in five different directions. All in that one intro. I—let's stick with education for a minute, though. The “democratization of education,” is it really? I mean, the opportunity says it is, but does it really filter down in such a way that it reaches people in a democratic way?

 

00;06;53;27 - 00;07;24;00

Sean Southey

So what I mean is that we learn from different sources. We learn from the informal sources that are around us, our parents, our church, we learn from the nonformal spaces, our clubs, our associations, and we learn from school. Regardless of your socioeconomic background, regardless of your religion, regardless of your parents’ beliefs, when you go to school, you hear the same thing as your neighbor.

 

00;07;24;03 - 00;07;57;29

Sean Southey

So if there is good education in that context, it's an opportunity for all. That doesn't mean that there's good information and good education in every context. It means it's equal to everyone in that context. Our challenge is to find a way to get good education into every environment so everyone can be privy to it, and everyone can change their, the way they look at the world to advance themselves, their family and the environment they live.

 

00;07;58;03 - 00;08;36;20

Gerry Ellis, Host

What drove the question was because I think of David Orr's writings, for example, and talking about that education and the balance of it, that's where maybe we make, we should make the distinction. There's a difference in all of them getting the same information versus what that information is that they're getting. How do we change that education to ensure that not only are they get, is everybody getting the same access and same information, but the information that we do give them incorporates the kinds of things that they need so that they are capable of being balanced, thinking individuals.

 

00;08;36;23 - 00;08;57;21

Sean Southey

So you've asked the holy grail of questions: how do we reach people with the right information in the right time, in the right space to allow them to do the right thing? And there is no simple silver bullet answer. But we do know there's some things you can do that make it much more likely that success will happen.

 

00;08;57;24 - 00;09;38;29

Sean Southey

The first one for me is recognizing the power of love, the power of connection. When people connect to nature, it changes their relationship with nature, changes the way they vote. It changes the way they shop. It changes the way they raise their kids, changes the jobs they take. So as environmental educators, our first responsibility foremost is to create the context for meaningful relationships with nature, repeated with people we love to help create that meaningful, transformative moments which change us forever

 

00;09;39;01 - 00;10;00;13

Sean Southey

In our relationship with the world. That can happen when you climb a mountain. It can happen when you look under water for the first time. It's often connected to place, and it's mostly connected to authority figures, parental figures that we respect and love.

 

00;10;00;15 - 00;10;09;20

Gerry Ellis, Host

That was that first question from there that popped in my mind was, how much does it rely on the trust we have in those figures who introduce us to that experience?

 

00;10;09;23 - 00;10;33;11

Sean Southey

So for maybe a decade, I've been starting every workshop that I ran with the simple opening question of “when did you fall in love with nature?” And I get people to pair up and answer when they fell in love with nature. I find it a opening question or revealing question, and over time I became fascinated by the answers.

 

00;10;33;13 - 00;11;05;28

Sean Southey

Indigenous people often went, that's a stupid question. I've always been in love with nature. Farmers often the same answer. What do you mean? I've always loved nature, but many, many times it's, “I was out hunting with my grandmother.” As an environmentalist, the first time you hear that is shocking. You know, hunting? Yes. Hunting and fishing are a powerful experience for many, but mostly with a parental or grand parental figure.

 

00;11;06;00 - 00;11;35;11

Sean Southey

It turns out grandparents are particularly powerful for shifting behavior at scale. But it can be your teacher. It can be someone from your local club. Scouts. Powerful mechanism. The Scouts movement has created love and connection with millions of boys and girls around the world. That trust is an integral part of that relationship, because you need to be in a trusted context before you can open up your heart and see what's around you.

 

00;11;35;13 - 00;12;05;08

Sean Southey

This is why some of my favorite programs I've ever seen around the world are programs like Outdoor Grannies in Columbia that grandmothers take their grandkids outside. They learn about nature, they take their grandchildren out, and they experience together that work. And it turns out to be a powerful, transformative experience for both. So trust is critical. Repeated exposures is critical.

 

00;12;05;11 - 00;12;35;19

Sean Southey

Transformative moments which are often take place in new spaces. You're first time to see the sea. Or in repeated spaces. I went to that stream as an eight year old and I made dams, and I played with frogs and and small fish. Those are the experiences that transform us and good environmental education builds on this understanding and institutionalizes it, and creates moments repeated where it can be made again and again for the student and the teacher.

 

00;12;35;22 - 00;13;02;12

Gerry Ellis, Host

I think one of the things that's been so frustrating to me over the years is when I've watched education in different settings, is that it seems to always be a punctuation to the rest of life. And we see that when we're working with NGOs in, in Africa or Borneo or, or we're working with schools in the US, Canada, it's, they'll bring somebody in or they'll give it, you know, an hour once a week.

 

00;13;02;12 - 00;13;24;13

Gerry Ellis, Host

And it's this punctuation and I'm, I liken it to, learning a foreign language. You can't learn a foreign language with a punctuation mark once every three months or once a year or something. You have to be immersed in it. And I'm constantly perplexed at why we haven't figured out how to create an immersion of environmental education.

 

00;13;24;16 - 00;13;44;19

Sean Southey

You and I are both old enough to remember. When we were young, our parents literally threw us outside at eight in the morning, and we came back at 9 or 10 at night. That was an immersive experience. We were outside, we were dirty. We were playing with our friends, we hurt ourselves. We fell down. We discovered things.

 

00;13;44;22 - 00;14;13;04

Sean Southey

There was wild play. Turns out those are the ingredients to understand and connect to your environment. But if we look at the social pressures of the last 50 years and Richard Louv and other speak about this, the danger phenomena, the fear that's created in a parent now, those have created this barrier between a child's comfort outside and therefore their immersion outside and the experience.

 

00;14;13;11 - 00;14;45;01

Sean Southey

If we take a deep breath and we look at the data, however, when you have that continued immersive experience in nature, your learning outcomes get better. Your health outcomes get better. Your empathy, anxiety, your trauma all go down. There's no question that the nature of phenomena works. It works for children. It works for older people. Nature's an incredible healer.

 

00;14;45;03 - 00;15;14;00

Sean Southey

Nature's also a teacher. It's also a classroom. It is a soother. A calmer and a stimulator. So what I'm advocating a lot more for is to recognize that we need more nature in the classroom, and we need to put the classroom more into nature. It's a very simple but profound idea, and the best ideas are both simple and profound.

 

00;15;14;02 - 00;15;53;02

Gerry Ellis, Host

How do you then going back to what we began with was communication. How do you communicate that then to an audience that's buried in the pedagogy of education, that's buried in the formula of it, which is, you know, is built on a whole different approach to it. I mean, I think back on a teacher that I had in grade school, and he actually he loved to take his classes out in a sit in the playground, the grasses and trees, and he would whole class out there.

 

00;15;53;09 - 00;16;10;19

Gerry Ellis, Host

He eventually got fired because that's not how you do this. That's not how you teach. I mean, he was—and every student he had remembers him. And this is like fourth grade and if it resonates so why is it been so difficult?

 

00;16;10;22 - 00;16;30;01

Sean Southey

So it's a sad story you tell because that's a great teacher. And the students remember that teacher and they connect to that teacher because they connected to that experience, which was different and outside. I happened to Google today with someone how many teachers there are on the planet? Do you have any idea of how many there are?

 

00;16;30;03 - 00;16;31;07

Gerry Ellis, Host

I have no clue. None.

 

00;16;31;09 - 00;17;12;12

Sean Southey

The internet pops up the number 97.3 million. Almost 100 million teachers each going through school to learn to teach each of those schools are now teaching a certain way based on a core teaching model that's becoming increasingly centralized, not increasingly decentralized. The goalposts are getting smaller, the learner outcomes are getting narrower. What “good” looks like is becoming more and more defined by the business of education and if we want to take a deep breath and reflect, why is there less nature,

 

00;17;12;12 - 00;17;36;02

Sean Southey

We have to recognize that that means there's more of something else. And I think that's pressure to succeed in a business-based world where outcomes are measured by grades. Because grades get you into the right school, colleges get you into right profession, professionals get you in the right field, and we fetishize the fields that give us the most money.

 

00;17;36;04 - 00;18;09;17

Sean Southey

So we've got a relatively broken system from the way we teach, to the way we measure success. If you get young kids outside and they connect to nature, it changes what that career path looks like. I told you before, the story is that I've started every workshop, you know, when did you fall in love with nature? So as an experiment, I did this at a workshop on health-related issues, and I didn't get any answers.

 

00;18;09;20 - 00;18;39;18

Sean Southey

They didn't fall in love with the nature the same way because they were health professionals. And it made me realize that the reason I was getting great stories from our field in environment was because they were there, because they fell in love. And that's the way we can transform the education paradigm, is having that intimate connection because then people self define what success looks like differently.

 

00;18;39;21 - 00;19;01;22

Sean Southey

And if you decide, I want to be a marine biologist and I'm willing to take a 30% reduction in salary because I'm going to spend my life looking at fish that I love. That's a beautiful alternative path, but it's only going to happen if you played with fish when you were young and fell in love with those fish.

 

00;19;01;24 - 00;19;07;07

Sean Southey

So one of the avenues is connection and love. It's not the only avenue, but it's a good one.

 

00;19;07;14 - 00;19;23;07

Gerry Ellis, Host

Passion is the word that comes to mind. If you develop that passion for something, then you're willing—it doesn't matter. You're going to do it anyway, and you're going to find a way to work your way through. Success isn’t going to have the same value.

 

00;19;23;09 - 00;19;48;00

Sean Southey

I'm thinking back to your story of the poor man who did a great job and was fired. One of my other worries is that we see environmental educators as that cute man, woman down the corridor, last room on the left who spends all his time just talking to kids. Just talking to kids. It's not building fences.

 

00;19;48;00 - 00;20;21;08

Sean Southey

He's not doing policy. He's not doing fundraising. He or she are just talking to kids. We've underestimated this entire profession. We've underestimated the importance of it. And in doing so, they each feel marginalized and they each feel alone. And there's no connective tissue between this community to lift them and reinforce their work, to create sharing and opportunities. And when there's only 1 or 2 in a school, in an NGO, in an organization, there's not critical mass to feel connected to something bigger.

 

00;20;21;11 - 00;20;50;00

Sean Southey

So one of the things we need to do is create that mycelium across the community where every official or unofficial environmental educator feels connected to that vision, understands what they're doing, is reinforced in the way they undertake their craft, is continuously learning, being challenged, and whether they're rewarded in a financial way or not, they feel rewarded for their work.

 

00;20;50;03 - 00;21;13;18

Sean Southey

That's why the conferences like here are so important. Because these are where we come together. We affirm each other. We hear our stories, we manifest new ways of looking at what we'll do next. That's why I love I mean, many people question conferences these days, but this is for me where the relationships and the work really happens.

 

00;21;13;21 - 00;21;15;13

Gerry Ellis, Host

That mycelium grows.

 

00;21;15;15 - 00;21;18;24

Sean Southey

Yeah, it tends to do that. Mycelium grows.

 

00;21;18;26 - 00;21;32;11

Gerry Ellis, Host

If that's the case, are we not—should we be reaching out to other communities to invite them to these conferences so that they see that network? They see this passion?

 

00;21;32;14 - 00;22;05;05

Sean Southey

Yeah. So I'm a firm believer that we need to weave communities more. We need to enter into different communities in a way they're ready to hear and advance the thinking I am been doing for the last 3 or 4 years with a wonderful woman, Dr. Cheryl Charles, I've been teaching nature-based leadership. Nature-based leadership. It's, we don't think of leadership as being nature based, but it's, everyone wants to be a leader.

 

00;22;05;13 - 00;22;37;29

Sean Southey

Everyone wants to feel they're a leader. These are concrete MBA type skills. So bringing the metaphors of the eco system to the way we look at to finding and augmenting leadership is, for me, a fascinating way to reach new communities and weave them into the environmental discourse where they're ready to be. You know, as communicators, all of us know, meet your audience where they are, not where you want them to be.

 

00;22;38;02 - 00;23;26;13

Sean Southey

And that's what we need to do more of. These conferences are wonderful, but we do tend again, to sing a little bit to the choir. Although the diversity of a 1000 person conference is very special. I just came last week from the conference, biological diversities conference, the party with 20,000 people in Colombia and watching scientists talking to educators, talking to youth, talking to elders, talking to Indigenous people, talking to business people just reminded me of the power of that connection, the power of that sharing. What happens when we jointly, honestly love something together.

 

00;23;26;16 - 00;23;36;26

Gerry Ellis, Host

You've just become the new director, CEO of the Canadian Wildlife Federation. After all the things that you've done, why that role?

 

00;23;36;29 - 00;23;40;24

Sean Southey

So I fell in love with our strategic plan. It's not the answer you expected.

 

00;23;40;24 - 00;23;54;17

Gerry Ellis, Host

No at all. We just, for our organization GLOBIO, we just wrote a new strategic plan. I wish my board members would fall in love with it a bit more. That's a really interesting answer.

 

00;23;54;23 - 00;24;20;12

Sean Southey

But it's a very nontraditional and yet very common strategic plan. It has four pillars. And these are my words, not the words of the plan. I'm going to adjust it a little bit. So for the Canadian Wildlife Federation, the first pillar is: Help create a culture of conservation and care for every Canadian. We started talking about culture.

 

00;24;20;14 - 00;24;35;18

Sean Southey

Imagine finding a place that aspired to create a culture of conservation in every Canadian. The second pillar is: Inspire every Canadian to act for conservation.

 

00;24;35;20 - 00;25;04;25

Sean Southey

Those are not science-based goals. These are heart-based goals. Heartbeat-based goals. I loved an organization or organization that was audacious enough to think, let's try and create a culture where everyone is connected, loving, and inspired to do action. There's a third pillar which is: Protect the species that matter in the places they live. So there is a deep species-based entry point, but that cross cuts with the first two pillars.

 

00;25;04;29 - 00;25;32;19

Sean Southey

So when we create monarchs, or create rights of ways for monarchs to have the right places to pollinate and grow, that is used to also create ways for Canadians to be involved in creating pollinator gardens in their homes. And therefore be inspired to take action and create a culture of conservation. So simple answer, but it's because it's a profound strategic plan.

 

00;25;32;21 - 00;25;50;15

Sean Southey

What I like about it is it's not something that the CWF, the Canadian Wildlife Federation, can do alone. It can only be done in partnership with large number of groups. And so it moves us away from an economy of competition into an economy of collaboration and cooperation.

 

00;25;50;17 - 00;26;13;00

Gerry Ellis, Host

I think back on a phrase that I heard years ago, when I was working for the World Wildlife Fund U.S., if we could just get everyone to leave their logos and egos at the door, we might accomplish something in that room. And that seemed to constantly be the issue at the time was this competition amongst all these people who were ostensibly fighting for the same thing?

 

00;26;13;06 - 00;26;40;07

Sean Southey

Ironically, I think we all want a culture of conservation and care. But if you look at the literature, the science, it says for people to connect to an issue, understand the issue, and respond, they need to see it and hear it and engage with it from seven different sources. So you need to read it in the newspaper. It needs to be part of a TV broadcast.

 

00;26;40;07 - 00;27;11;01

Sean Southey

Maybe it's on your favorite Netflix show. Your rabbi talks about it at synagogue and your grandmother talks about it at lunch. That's seven different touch points. If all those touch points come from WWF, that counts as one, not seven. So for us to reach our goal, it means we have to recognize that we are only one of seven, which means we have to be aligned with the other six.

 

00;27;11;01 - 00;27;40;02

Sean Southey

We have to have a common choir sheet. We have to stop competing with each other means we can't contradict each other. We certainly can't undermine each other. And in our profession we’re so good at saying, well, polar bears are really important. Well, now ice caps are really important. Well, now climate change is really important. When any simple child can tell you polar bears and ice caps and climate change are all exactly the same issue.

 

00;27;40;04 - 00;27;49;16

Gerry Ellis, Host

I think most people looking at Canada, this is a country of few people and tons of wilderness. Aren't you connected already?

 

00;27;49;19 - 00;28;21;13

Sean Southey

So we are lucky we are more connected than many, but like many northern-based cultures and I don't know that the hard statistics, but I'm guessing approximately 90% are within 100 or 150 miles from the U.S. border. We all like to live in warm places. So once you leave that band along the border, those central cities of Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, you start getting very spread out.

 

00;28;21;17 - 00;28;58;15

Sean Southey

So those are urban phenomenas with the same urban challenges and the same phone-based cultures and fear issues that you would get in any mid-sized U.S city. So let's not think that Canada, everyone's out living in, in rural environments. If you go out of that band, you meet many Canadians who are inherently connected to and deeply connected to nature, as is anyone who wakes up every morning and experiences it outside every day.

 

00;28;58;17 - 00;29;21;19

Sean Southey

If you drive or walk, you know, 30 minutes through nature to get to your school or your work. I believe you have a completely different relationship than if you get on a bus or your car and and go through a city landscape. And I don't want to say there's anything wrong with cities. There's many, many stories in those

 

00;29;21;19 - 00;29;49;10

Sean Southey

“When I fell in love with nature” stories which are profoundly urban stories. There is the South Korea young man who told me he saw a piece of grass growing between two pieces of sidewalk, and then spent the rest of his life making urban, you know, gardens and playgrounds for kids because of that one piece of grass. There's the people who fell in love through museums and aquariums and botanical gardens.

 

00;29;49;10 - 00;30;23;22

Sean Southey

These gateways to conservation, which are around us everywhere, in every city. There is many, many ways to fall in love with nature in an urban context. The proliferation of community gardens, the proliferation of places where people grow food in community, eat that food. The hard places are the food deserts of true urban density where you we really have to be more thoughtful about creating the space.

 

00;30;23;28 - 00;30;38;18

Gerry Ellis, Host

What does environmental education mean to you? Like when you're sitting alone at night and just thinking about this planet and thinking—what is what does that mean to you?

 

00;30;38;20 - 00;31;10;14

Sean Southey

So first of all, I have to say, I don't love labels because I believe you could call this thing a hundred different things and they'd all be meaningful. We have education for sustainable development. We have experiential education. We have environmental education. We have nature-based education. I could go on for 30 minutes and they all do the same sort of things, different lenses for different audience.

 

00;31;10;14 - 00;31;44;11

Sean Southey

So they're all valuable in their own way. And the biggest umbrella term which captures the most of them is environmental education. For me, environmental education is using the environment to help people love the environment and act for the environment. Because education is the process. So it's a two way street. How do we recognize the power, the force of the environment, nature?

 

00;31;44;13 - 00;32;20;10

Sean Southey

I like the word nature more than environment. So how do we use and recognize nature as the classroom and the teacher to change the way we look at nature? Because frankly, we are all nature and so it's a self-reflexive internal rebalancing of your relationship with the planet. And that's what good environmental education does. It just connects you through education, which is a process of learning and engaging,

 

00;32;20;12 - 00;32;23;12

Sean Southey

Back to nature, back to home.

 

00;32;23;15 - 00;32;34;27

Gerry Ellis, Host

Some would say it's semantics, but do you think that would change the way some people think about this? If it was called, if they thought of it as nature education.

 

00;32;34;29 - 00;33;07;16

Sean Southey

So in my work in IUCN, where I chair a commission on education communication, we're actually using the term often nature-based education. And it's done because it's targeting a different audience. It's not targeting the education community. It's targeting the conservation community who've had environmental educators embedded in them for 50 years. And there again, that cute man or woman down the corridor who does their thing.

 

00;33;07;19 - 00;33;40;03

Sean Southey

And we want to shock that paradigm and have them realize that nature is, in fact, a profound learning space, a profound learning experience. Sometimes you frankly need a new name for something to get people to look at it again. That doesn't make environmental education any less important or any less valid. It is the biggest name for this. But again, meet your audience where they are.

 

00;33;40;05 - 00;34;04;24

Sean Southey

What is the name you can give this that makes the right actions happen as likely as possible. Make it easy to do good behavior. So let's learn from them all, recognize them all, applaud them all, and weave those communities so the best learning comes out of each. The profound, simple answer is we are nature. We really are.

 

00;34;04;26 - 00;34;37;06

Sean Southey

We are beautiful animals, but we're animals. I think the last thousand years have profoundly disconnected us from our sense of nature. And there's been a lot of forces that have done that. The entire Industrial Revolution, the industrialized education format. And let's keep in mind, education wasn't created at first to empower and liberate. It was created to prepare people to go into factories and work.

 

00;34;37;08 - 00;35;16;22

Sean Southey

Sometimes I worry we never grew beyond that. We're still preparing people to go into factories and work. Our religions, frankly, often talk about stewardship and ownership, not at least in the Judeo-Christian face. They don't talk about connection. They don't talk about being part of. They talk about being above and in control of. There's many forces before we introduce the internet and the cell phone and the screen and the workload and the pressures and the fear that were disconnecting us from nature. Those forces that are at a profound, heightened level that we've never experienced before.

 

00;35;16;24 - 00;36;02;06

Sean Southey

Digital natives these days are comfortable on an iPad at the age of two. Each of us has got more pressure to use our time for quote unquote productive means. And that isn't a walk in the park. It's not a walk with our kids. It's not—I think we need to take a deep breath and right an imbalance and think about the world we want. And the world we want for me, is a simple world where we are connected to nature, where we love it, where it's part of our lives, where we introduce our kids to it, where we nourish it, where we take care of it, where it is

 

00;36;02;06 - 00;36;26;23

Sean Southey

a cultural part of who we are and what our communities are. That means we can't be afraid of it, or we have to be appropriately afraid of it. It means our teachers need to be comfortable in it. It means our curriculum needs to be built around it. It means our classrooms need to be green, means our experiences after school have to look at more than a keyboard.

 

00;36;27;29 - 00;36;58;01

Sean Southey

And all that's not that hard. And in fact, we know it works. Some of the global forces we see now, like the, the movement to green schoolyards and create green schoolyards across the planet, is growing, is in reflection to a growing recognition that something's wrong with the education system. That being said, the forces of productivity are still probably winning over the forces of greening.

 

00;36;58;03 - 00;37;04;08

Gerry Ellis, Host

You mentioned a fourth pillar at one point, and I just wanted to check back with you on that. What was that?

 

00;37;04;10 - 00;37;28;24

Sean Southey

So I love the first three pillars that creating a culture of conservation and care, the inspiring every Canadian and protecting every species and the places they live. But we have a fourth pillar, and that's being a beautiful organization. And if you're not a beautiful organization, it's really impossible to aspire to those first three pillars. Are our staff treated well?

 

00;37;28;26 - 00;37;56;18

Sean Southey

Are our finances secure? Are we respecting each other in the way we communicate and our work flow? So that fourth pillar speaks to are we living the values that we aspire to on the outside? Are we creating a place where people want to work? So I think of our triple bottom line as: What is our conservation impact?

 

00;37;56;20 - 00;38;14;13

Sean Southey

What is the impact and the happiness of our team? And at the end of the day, what is our financial health? Because in this world, in this economy, still you need to have a robust financial bottom line.

 

00;38;14;15 - 00;38;17;28

Gerry Ellis, Host

Is your strategic plan online?

 

00;38;18;01 - 00;38;41;28

Sean Southey

It's a one pager. It's a visual thing. It's, so one of my challenges is it's a one-page strategic plan. It's just the pillars, which is great. And it's a year old. It's a five-year plan. But one of the beautiful things as a new CEO is I get to come in and help create the narrative around how we're going to get there.

 

00;38;42;00 - 00;39;11;14

Sean Southey

And having spent ten years of my life designing communication campaigns, behavior change campaigns around the world, I'm excited to think about how do you reach every Canadian? And we're complicated. We're beautifully complicated. We have half a million new immigrants a year coming from countries far and wide. We have rural populations who live completely different realities.

 

00;39;11;17 - 00;39;29;12

Sean Southey

Vancouver is a different culture and center of gravity than Toronto. To say nothing of going out to P.E.I. and Nova Scotia. So that complexity is beautiful, but it creates an interesting challenge if you want to reach every Canadian.

 

00;39;29;14 - 00;39;32;26

Gerry Ellis, Host

Nature for all. Can we talk about that for a minute?

 

00;39;32;29 - 00;39;34;27

Sean Southey

Well, we have been talking about it.

 

00;39;35;00 - 00;39;35;17

Gerry Ellis, Host

Okay.

 

00;39;35;22 - 00;40;14;06

Sean Southey

We've been talking about love and connection and we and my IUCN family community realized that we needed to have a platform, a campaign, a program, a space for the groups who believe in this theory of change, this connection theory of change, this love theory of change to share best practices and to learn from each other. We created eight years ago a program called Nature for All, and you can find it at www.natureforall.global and it's now got 600 partner organizations.

 

00;40;14;06 - 00;40;14;16

Gerry Ellis, Host

Around the world?

 

00;40;14;16 - 00;40;45;13

Sean Southey

From around the world, literally from around the world. It's those Outdoor Grannies in Colombia we talked about to learn to camp here and in Canada, in Canada, where Parks Canada helps new immigrants learn to go outside to programs in Mauritius or India, which get young students out in nature. And the concept is very simple. We look to the community for innovations and insights.

 

00;40;45;15 - 00;41;17;27

Sean Southey

We surface best practice, we codify that best practice, and then we connect people in that mycelium model so they can find like-minded groups, like minded ideas, and build and riffed off each other's work. If there's an Outdoors Grannies in Columbia, couldn't there be an outdoor granny program in Madagascar, in Mongolia, in Peru. If there's a Learn-to-Camp here in Canada, what about Austria?

 

00;41;17;29 - 00;41;26;18

Sean Southey

We're finding the number of groups that believe in the power of connection

 

00;41;26;21 - 00;41;35;10

Sean Southey

Is quite remarkable. So I encourage you to look at it, learn from it, play with it, share your resources, and encourage others to get involved. It's all free.

 

00;41;35;13 - 00;41;42;11

Gerry Ellis, Host

Just out of curiosity, how—those 600 organizations—how many human beings are they touching?

 

00;41;42;18 - 00;42;02;29

Sean Southey

So it's a really fascinating question because even after eight years, we've never done a particularly good job of the metrics. And that speaks a little bit to our culture, where we focused on the core belief that connection is good and not being as worried about the numbers. But I've been fascinated by this question for a long time.

 

00;42;03;02 - 00;42;40;09

Sean Southey

We have some huge partners in there. The groups like Conservation International with a thousand staff and $1 billion budgets, IUCN with a thousand staff, 45 country offices, 17,000 experts across seven commissions, small mom and pop shops out in the world. I'm guessing across these 600 organizations, you're talking hundreds of millions of touch points on a monthly basis, because all of these groups are connecting people to nature in their own way.

 

00;42;40;11 - 00;43;11;03

Gerry Ellis, Host

The reason I ask is because we constantly are bombarded about the negative side of what's happening to our planet. And I think what you gave us right there is a reason we should celebrate that hundreds of millions of people are silently, well, hopefully vocally in their own communities, but silently behind this media wall, going about trying to build a better planet, trying to build a world we want it.

 

00;43;11;06 - 00;43;41;23

Sean Southey

So it's actually super interesting you say that because the Nature for All was created based out of an insight that IUCN had 15 years ago. And it was again, profound but simple. The power of love, not lost messaging. Love not loss. Turns out if you look at all the data, loss disconnects. You fear anxiety, scare tactics, the last polar bear.

 

00;43;41;23 - 00;44;13;13

Sean Southey

The climate change is coming. Your children are in trouble. They're good for a short term emotive response. They're not good for a new connection to long term social norms and behaviors. Love is the way to manifest long term behavior change. The data says it, the research says it. And if you look at the way many organizations now do their messaging, we no longer see those starving children, those sick animals as the front line messaging.

 

00;44;13;13 - 00;44;25;18

Sean Southey

We see messages of hope, messages of optimism, messages of inspiration, because those are the ones—we're learning it as a collective communication community—that truly manifest change.

 

00;44;25;20 - 00;44;48;09

Gerry Ellis, Host

Sean, thank you so much for this. For giving a voice to everything that you've been talking about. It's really nice. And I think people are going to I think people are really going to love this podcast because, this particular episode, because I think it's going to make them reconnect to the way they think about nature education.

 

00;44;48;12 - 00;44;50;00

Gerry Ellis, Host

So thank you.

 

00;44;50;03 - 00;45;04;24

Sean Southey

Thank you. It's actually quite liberating to talk about it. It would be really interesting if everyone did a podcast and everyone talked about their connection to nature. Probably be quite a transformative experience for most of us. So thank you.

 

00;45;04;26 - 00;45;08;10

Gerry Ellis, Host

Sean. Once again, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate this.

 

00;45;08;10 - 00;45;12;20

Sean Southey

It's a real pleasure. Thank you.

 

00;45;12;23 - 00;45;41;20

Gerry Ellis, Host

I want to thank Sean for sitting down and sharing his deeply personal and passionate perspective on nature-based education. You can discover more on our website at naaee.org/podcast. And there you'll find a blog and links to a wealth of EE resources. As you've just heard, environmental education is like a river that runs through all of us. To explore every bend in that river

 

00;45;41;20 - 00;46;14;01

Gerry Ellis, Host

subscribe to the World We Want podcast. There's a link on our website or wherever you find your favorite podcast. We would love to hear from you and hear what you think. And if there's an aspect of environmental education you want to know more about, let us know. Email us at podcast@naaee.org. The World We Want Podcast is a production of the North American Association for Environmental Education.

 

00;46;14;03 - 00;46;37;29

Gerry Ellis, Host

I'd like to send out a special thanks to our entire team Carrie Albright, Judy Braus, Jimena Cuenca, and Stacie Pierpoint, and a special thanks to you for being a part of the world we want. We hope, our conversations on The World We Want to lead you to take action in your own world every day. I'm Gerry Ellis, thanks for listening and thanks for sharing The World

 

00;46;37;29 - 00;46;47;16

Gerry Ellis, Host

We Want: The NAAEE Podcast.