Will you take part in World Ocean Day for Schools?

With World Ocean Day for Schools fast approaching on Friday 7 June, we spoke to Steve King from Wild Labs all about their watery campaign. 

“What if there was something like World Book Day on World Ocean Day? We could celebrate ocean literacy like reading literacy is done on World Book Day.” April 2018.

It all started with that thought. Within 6 weeks we had launched our first World Ocean Day for Schools.

We know that all of our education needs to be more ecologically grounded. However, even the nature curriculum we do have is very green; there is an immense need for more blue.

That’s why we want to firstly raise awareness of the human connection to the ocean, and ocean’s connection to humans. And while we are not setting out to directly change the curriculum, we provide the learning resources so that children can talk about the ocean in a meaningful way. This can then lead to making more informed and responsible decisions, as a school and as a wider community.

Fun facts about the ocean to get everyone started:

• Babies are three quarters water, the same as the planet.
• Every second breath we take is oxygen made by the ocean.
• It’s easier to launch a person into space than it is to send a person down to the bottom of the ocean.
• 12 people have been to the moon but only three people to the deepest part of the ocean.
• We drink water that a dinosaur once drank.
• ‘The Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ is seven times the size of the UK

We have two themes for 2019: ‘Connection to water’ and ‘Impact on the ocean’. The themes are used to curate the best curriculum content and are provided free for use on the day and throughout the year. We have partnered with the leading marine NGOs including Marine Conservation Society, Thames Estuary Partnership, National Marine Aquarium, Marine Biological Association, WWF, The Wild Network and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Our connection to water.

We are watery beings. When we’re born we are 75% water. All water is connected to the ocean and so are we. Our resource toolkit will help kids discover their connection to water and the ocean.

Our impact on the ocean.

Everything ultimately leads to the ocean. How we live in our homes, schools, villages, and cities impacts the ocean in the end. Our resource toolkit will help kids learn about how their actions affect the ocean and what they can do about it.

This is a program that is available for all educators around the world. The resources will be available on the day, as well as everyday to support us in creating a more ocean literate society. An ocean literate society would have all professions making more informed and responsible decisions about the ocean, to help it maintain our life on this blue planet.

We are deep in the building of 2019, and have already started to think about the years to come. We have ambitions to make it global next year, as well as be able to provide a year round learning resource platform to transform each classroom blue. By 2020 we hope to be running the program for over 5 million kids.

Stay tuned, and register now for 2019 at worldoceanday.school

Thank you to Steve King from Wild Labs for providing this blog!