From Lessons to Legacy: Born Free & GenEarth in Action

King of the Jungle workshop in 2025 (c) GenEarth

At Born Free, we understand that knowledge helps to ignite passion, and, ultimately, has the power to drive us to make positive changes. That’s why we partner with GenEarth. Together, we reach thousands of young people every year, teaching them about the importance of wildlife and its protection.    

This World Teacher Day, we want to celebrate GenEarth’s amazing community of educators and changemakers. Their role is invaluable in helping Born Free to reach school children across the UK with lessons all about wildlife and helping create a legacy of young people who feel empathy and compassion for wild animals. Born Free’s Senior Education Officer, Charlie Smith, explains why our partnership is so important.

Charlie Smith, Senior Education Officer

The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, with populations of both plants and animals in rapid decline, and the majority of wild habitats in poor condition due to habitat loss, pollution, and overexploitation.

The UK’s role in the climate crisis is also significant, with emissions dating back to the industrial revolution still in the atmosphere, and our continued reliance on fossil fuels contributing to climate-related emergencies and biodiversity loss across the globe.

It is vital that the next generation have access to the comprehensive climate and wildlife education they deserve, so they can grow up with the knowledge, skills, and empathy to shape a society that cherishes and protects nature for its own intrinsic value. Yet, with a jam-packed National Curriculum, even the most enthusiastic, wildlife-loving teacher may struggle to incorporate lessons about wild animals and environmental protection into their classroom.

This is where our partnership comes in. Our aim is to better support teachers and provide young people with inspirational, curriculum-linked, conservation and animal welfare education, through outreach workshops in schools.

Empowering through partnership

GenEarth and Born Free have worked in partnership since 2020. Prior to this, our reach and geography were limited, but together we have been able to empower and inspire even more young people across the UK.

Precious Primates workshop (c) GenEarth

Our organisations’ shared values and objectives have enabled us both to deliver Born Free workshops based on wild species, including lions, elephants and primates. Each session aims to raise awareness of conservation, animal welfare, environmental issues or the threats facing wildlife amongst young people, whilst providing teachers with confidence that they have covered these vital topics, in an engaging and exciting way.

Something that sets Born Free’s workshops apart are the stories of individual animals we work to protect – from known animals in the field, to captive animals that we have been able to rescue and offer spacious sanctuary homes to. These stories allow children to appreciate wild animals as sentient beings, with their own emotions, characters, likes and dislikes; enabling them to build empathy together with species knowledge.

Alongside the Born Free and GenEarth teams, it is their passionate community of facilitators, volunteers, and conservationists who are at the heart of the delivery. This amazing community, many of whom are conservationists themselves, make the running of many more workshops possible. They lead sessions in dynamic and engaging ways, sharing their knowledge, but more importantly passion, and encouraging young people to explore the positive actions they can take for the planet.

There is something uniquely powerful about conservationists leading sessions, as it creates a sense of connection, possibility, and urgency that makes the message of protecting wildlife resonate even more deeply amongst young people.

What do teachers think?

We asked teachers, whose classes had taken part in our workshops, what they valued most about the session. Their feedback clearly shows how much the workshops, and their contents, resonate with both young people and educators: 

“The discussions on how different stakeholders would consider the fate of an animal based on a true story helped the children to really consider the seriousness of animals being held in captivity and reflect on how they felt about this.” Class Teacher, An Elephant Called Slowly Workshop

“The children loved learning the animal facts and they were fascinated to learn about the threats facing each kind of wildlife. Before the workshop, many were not aware that these animals were in danger.” Class Teacher, Threats Facing Wildlife Workshop

“The debate activity was most engaging for children. It got them to consider animal rights and ethics of zoos.” Class Teacher, An Elephant Called Slowly Workshop

Feedback from pupils

The impact of the workshops can also be heard from the young participants themselves. After receiving a Precious Primates workshop, pupils shared what they learnt and reflected on the role they could play in protecting wildlife, and their work displays a real sense of empathy and desire to make a difference: 

“We need to protect animals because they are endangered and they help life. Everybody is hunting animals and it needs to stop.” Year 2 pupil

“It is our job to help primates protect the rainforest from danger, it is our job to help the rainforests, animals and habitats. It is our job to create a better world for animals and save the planet from climate change.” Year 3 pupil

“Due to deforestation, animals’ habitat is becoming a lot more worse and the food chains are breaking a lot now. What we’re doing to animals is really bad. They are having to leave their family and relatives. Are you just going to sit around and let it happen? How would you feel if you are in that position, think about it.”  Year 3 pupil

We’re continually inspired by how these workshops encourage pupils to think deeply, moving beyond facts to real understanding, combining critical thought with empathy and considering not just the facts, but the feelings of animals too. Although harder to measure, we hope the reflective practices embedded within sessions spark conversations that continue well beyond the classroom, with family members at home and friends in the playground.  

The Great Debate workshop (c) GenEarth

Our partnership with GenEarth has grown from strength-to-strength over the past five years. Since our partnership began in 2020, GenEarth have helped us to increase the number of Born Free workshops being delivered to schools by an incredible 158%.

Together, we have directly reached more than 18,000 young people, far more than we could have reached alone.  This means even more young people have engaged with our messages and understand their role in protecting wildlife, on both a local and global level. GenEarth have also provided Born Free with vital support to help us measure the impact that these sessions have on pupils, allowing us to continue to improve, ensuring the message of the importance of protecting wild animals in instilled amongst the next generation.

But none of this would be possible without the amazing GenEarth community and the teachers that they engage with. We would like to thank them for all they do to inspire the next generation.

How do I get involved?

If you are a teacher and would like to book a wildlife workshop for your class, please email Born Free’s Community Engagement Team, at: [email protected]

Born Free and GenEarth’s excellent facilitators and volunteers all hold up to date DBS checks, undergo full training, and are extremely passionate about wildlife.

If you have some spare time and want to inspire young people to protect wildlife whilst gaining valuable experience as a volunteer, please email GenEarth, at: [email protected] 

This blog was produced in partnership with GenEarth’s Programmes and Partnerships Manager, Loux Rutherford.