Nature Helps Us: Let’s Help Nature! 🌿🌼
Nature Helps Us: Let’s Help Nature! 🌿🌼

In 2005, the UN identified four types of Ecosystem Services as part of its Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (or MA). These Ecosystem Services refer to offerings that nature makes to humans. In the Spring Issue of Exchange magazine, authors Becky DelVecchio, Susan Ferguson, and David Ferguson explore how we can support children’s engagement with the ideas that are central to these services.


✅ Provisioning Services refer to the "things" nature gives us. Appreciating and exploring these services can involve considering how nature provides humans and other creatures with food and water, how nature provides material from plants and animals that enable us to make everything from paper to fabric to medicine.

✅ Regulating Services refer to the things that nature provides and the processes it undergoes that keep humans healthy. Consider things like clean air from trees and other plants, natural water purification systems, pollination from bees, and tree roots that keep soil from eroding.

✅ Cultural Services refers to the ways that nature influences "local, national, and global cultures; [contribute to] the building of knowledge and the spreading of ideas; [and foster] creativity born from interactions with nature." (World Wildlife Federation, n.d.). Some activities that may support this learning are: art-making inspired by nature, splashing in a brook, cloud-gazing, bird-watching, and so on.

✅ Supporting Services refer to how nature uses its own processes to keep itself and us healthy. Considering things like photosynthesis, the creation of soils, and the water cycle are all possible pathways to understanding and appreciating these supporting services.

The Ecosystem Services Framework offers a useful perspective for adults striving to develop their own and children’s knowledge of the reciprocity inherent in the relationships between humans and the wider world.

To read this reflective and engaging article, we invite you to sign up for a FREE Exchange membership.

Read the article here - https://hub.exchangepress.com/articles-on-demand/50541/

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Terri Kosik
5 HELPFUL things to consider when designing, nature-rich outdoor spaces for learning through nature play!
5 HELPFUL things to consider when designing, nature-rich outdoor spaces for learning through nature play!

Five Attainable Steps for Your Outdoor Space

Where to begin …..

➡️ Generate community buy-in

Help everyone feel heard and increase their sense of ownership in the design process

Mindfully incorporate local skilled labor and professionals

Set volunteers up for success by choosing doable projects

➡️ Be Cost-conscious

Introduce nature without breaking the bank

Phase a project to avoid wasteful spending

Use local and native materials

Focus on function and play-value

➡️ Plan for for the long-term

Read more here

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Terri Kosik
Pro Bono Counseling Project With MHAM
Pro Bono Counseling Project With MHAM

Did you know? MHAM works hard to provide free counseling for the Michiana community with their Pro Bono Counseling Project: https://buff.ly/3t5uKmQ

Short term therapy is a great service for individual, couples and families with acute problems. Once your application is received, it will be reviewed to make sure you're a good candidate for this project.

We're here to help you take the next steps.

mhamichiana.org | 574-393-8809, ext. 3

Pro Bono Counseling Project Application: here.

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