About us

ABOUT US?

The Young Explorers

It makes more sense for us to change ourselves to fit a finite planet than to try to manage the planet to fit our infinite desires.

Why was Young Explorers born?

For health

It makes more sense for us to change ourselves to fit a finite planet than to try to manage the planet to fit our infinite desires.

According to the WHO, children are especially vulnerable to air pollution during fetal development and in their first years of life, when the lungs, organs and brain are still developing. They breathe faster than adults, taking in more air and, therefore, more pollutants. Children live closer to the ground, where some pollutants reach maximum concentrations. It is proven that exposure to pollution has harmful effects on lung function, respiratory infections, asthma and increases the risk of cancer. There are indications that it may negatively influence neuronal development. Pollution causes up to a third of childhood asthma cases in Europe.

Due to sedentary lifestyle and Nature Deficit

When we develop a mountain we are reducing our children's play space. When we pave a park or a playground and replace the trees with games made of plastic, we distance them from the land and the living. When we leave them alone with the addiction to screens, we are replacing natural reality with a simulacrum, the outdoors with the four walls; run, jump, climb due to a sedentary lifestyle. Scholars have already called this new situation nature deficit disorder. A famous detergent campaign reported that prison inmates spend more time outdoors than our children.

To avoid Ecophobia

Our children are increasingly further away from nature because nature shrinks, fades and is no longer the space of discovery, free play and wonder that it was for other generations. Now it is that strange, distant, difficult place, without plugs or signal, about which they only receive apocalyptic news: In class, in the media, at home. Now it represents fear and drama: ecophobia.

To create an essential habit in our children: Bio Ecosophy

At Young Explorers we practice Bio Ecosophy, because ecology is not enough. We need more than knowledge. We need the wisdom to understand what is happening and how it affects everyone's lives, not just the lives of polar bears or coral. The life of our city, of our school, of our families. Wisdom to analyze our life and consumption habits and know if they coincide with our thinking. And if not, change them.

And we need it to be Bio Ecosophy because we have to be militant in defending and promoting life. Enough of just complaining: Let's create more life. Let's stop transmitting only tragedies to our children. Let's invite them to collaborate in positive events. For this reason, at Young Explorers we encourage our boys and girls at all times to participate in each and every one of our activities, focused on this picture, so that we all reflect on this situation and act.

The four personal commitments of Young Explorers

We must introduce a lot of nature into the lives of young people. To the extent of our possibilities, but with militant zeal. From our ambitious Young Explorers Project, where our activities take place directly in the forest or field, to the modest Explora Classroom, of my admired Explorers educators.

At the end of 2018, from the Montaña Rincón Club, I, as President of the Club, created this Project...Our objective was that we should take our children out on the field more often. Thus, we did it with very positive results in their capacities for wonder, observation and imitation and their interest in life.

My reasons for doing so were personal. My vocation for Nature made it easier. Every time the children accompanied us to the Hiking field they returned, in addition to being full of mud, happy, overflowing with joy, and with their pockets full of bugs, stones, seeds and stories to share. Every day it revived them... Why couldn't we have that vitality and curiosity as our own activity?

COUNTERING THE NATURE DEFICIT

It is not enough to put ecology in the curriculum. In this Project we dedicate a lot of work to make nature a daily habit. We train our Monitors and Educators to go out and look for trees, meadows, estuaries, forest ideas, adventures...

Every time we enter an activity with our children, we are expanding their nature deficit. Let's take advantage of the fact that we are in a city with nature still close by. We take the children out of the confinement of a Saturday at home. We plan Saturdays so that nature enters them. Hikes, picnics, adventures, knowledge. We live through the seasons. We create a place in Nature with our children, as a refuge, den or where we make a corner of the station where we can leave the treasures of each era. The improvement that nature generates in children is surprising.

It's not romanticism.

Studies prove it.

HOW DOES IT WORK

Environment

Activities with Great Environmental Impact

Reforestations

Insect Hotels

Nest Houses

Cleaning of Channels, Seas and Mountains

Protection and Knowledge about Flora and Fauna

Bird Banding

Forest Inventories

Mountain and Water Sports

Hiking

Climbing

Via Ferratas

Orientation

Survival

Archery

Rafting

Open sea swimming

Speleology

History

History themed games

Historical interpretations

Knowledge of Cultures

Archaeological Activities

Astronomical Activities

Social Activities with Vulnerable Groups

Twinning activities with children from other countries (Sahrawis, Belarusians, Europeans...)

Little Explorers

58

Young Explorers

205

Monitors

12

Aspiring Monitors

8

LIVE CONTEMPORARYLY

Our children must get their heads out of agendas, television routines and video games to breathe the world. I don't eat news and fads. Let's detect the underlying mega trends. The concerns of the best brains of humanity: philosophers, scientists, observers. Many authors and NGOs have warned us in advance of what was happening. We were all immersed in day-to-day life, without reacting while this disturbing future for the planet and our children was being written.

In 2018 I realized two capital issues: The ecological alarm and toxic-free activities and the effect that video games had on our children.

I realized that the situation was so critical that I ordered the elimination of activities that we did indoors, where I recommended things like painting a tree or drawing birds. It was well-intentioned, but it was no longer worth it. We need children to breathe reality, the real tree, hear the real birds, interact with real bugs.

Since then I have tried to make these two themes present in all my practice. In our activities in the Countryside, we use a large majority of recycled material, we encourage children not to eat industrial foods, we create new trails, we plant trees, we compost. worm bins, bird boxes, insect boxes... And we collaborate so that this is brought to the citizens.

TAlso ecologically, to be an example for our children.

It is not worth telling them how many trees burn every day in the Amazon, scaring children and then, on a daily basis, behaving with indifference towards nature. It is also not worth holding demonstrations chanting slogans.

At Young Explorers, we are the first to motivate our Explorers with the three “Rs”: Reduce, Recycle, Reuse.

Our Explorers collaborate with the forests and fields, in our mountains, for the fauna.

Our Explorers show more attention to the trees or birds on our walks than to the tablet screen. Our Explorers are the first to pick up a can from the ground in a park.

Our Explorers are the first to celebrate and experience the seasons in our calls and in our activities.