My love for nature was innate which I think is true for everyone, we are born with a need to go outside and explore hence why many children love going outside to play and not inside. Overtime nature became my anchor, my place of peace, far from all distractions and demands, a place to listen to my thoughts. It’s where I go to reset and refocus and it has had a huge contribution to maintaining my mental health.

Spending time with nature may look like going for a run on my own or taking a walk with a friend just to talk, connect. Sometimes I just like to sit and admire nature; from the sound of wind, to the way the trees dance in response to the breeze, the way the sky gradually changes to let us know when to rise or rest.

Nature is the only place that is free and allows people to gather, it encourages unity in many ways. I personally have seen it do so in the following ways; most teenagers spend their time in fields as it is place where they can meet up and catch up without having to pay for anything eg food; many people go on runs together with friends; families spend their days out in the park; there are a lot of sports clubs for young people that take place in parks.

Nature also has a spiritual aspect for me; it is the proof of God and his love (psalm 19:1-4). He loves everyone and everything so much that he took his time to intricately design all things.

As a kid I always loved the indoors. I hated going outside. My connection to nature started to form as I learnt more and more about our dying planet. As I was finally able to realise how much danger our planet was actually in. With the large quantities of plastic being dumped into our oceans every year. How this can have a huge impact on our food chain with microplastic contaminating nearly all of our seafood. Hundreds and thousands of species are on the brink of extinction.

It made me bring myself closer to nature. I wanted to go out, I wanted to embrace as much of it as I could. Being with nature allowed me to clear my head. Gave me a sense of freedom.

I was able to grow my connection to nature through my allotment. Being able to plant and grow my own fruits and vegetables allowed me to understand how much the earth really gives to us. It gave me a chance to learn and experience the life cycle of crops and the environment around me.

My connection to nature is not something that I can easily put in words. Nature is like a safe space where I feel protected and calm, a place where I can be myself. Nature is also full of new surprises and places to explore and I always feel really curious and excited to discover something new.

I always cared about protecting the environment but I didn’t have enough skills or ideas to be able to make a bigger impact. I participated in small scale projects with my school to reduce waste and show people the impacts that our actions had in the environment. With Action For Conservation, I have learnt lots of new skills on how to be more sustainable and how to clean and protect nature. I also learned more about nature and what it really means to protect it.