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

What does it mean to fall in love with nature—and why does that love matter for the future of our planet? 

In this episode of The World We Want: The NAAEE Podcast, host Gerry Ellis sits down with Sean Southey, CEO of the Canadian Wildlife Federation and longtime champion of nature-based education, to explore how love and connection form the foundation of lasting change. 

Sean shares powerful stories about how nature-based education transforms not only classrooms, but also communities, shaping how we live, lead, and care for the world around us. This conversation reveals why fostering a culture of care begins with the simple act of helping people connect—and fall in love—with nature. Sean guides listeners through the stages of reflection from childhood memories of wild play to global movements like Nature for All and Outdoor Grannies, from that one teacher who planted seeds of connection with nature to the potential for a more caring and connected community spanning countries and continents.

Join us as we hear from someone whose confidence in love’s ability to change the world and our relationship to it is both inspiring and activating: “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. 

Nature's an incredible healer. 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.”

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The World We Want: The NAAEE Podcast is an educational outreach project of the North American Association for Environmental Education.

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