25 years ago, a small idea took root on the banks of Zeekoevlei.

It was called the Zeekoevlei Environmental Education Programme. That idea grew into the Cape Town Environmental Education Trust, and eventually into the organisation we know today as Nature Connect.

This Youth Month, we celebrate a milestone that has always been about young people: 25 years of connecting people to nature, and a simple, powerful vision that has carried us from one small programme to a movement. As we reflect on this milestone, it's the people, the moments, and the impact behind the journey that really stand out.

As we move cautiously and expectantly into the age of AI, we look back on the last 25 years of the education efforts our staff have made to draw people into pro-environmental behaviours, reflecting on over 60 000 children we have taken on overnight camps, many for the first time; the over 500 youth we have supported through extended skills development programmes; and the countless hours of on the ground effort to actively steward our incredible biodiversity.

Today we recognise all the Nature Connect Champions, our Board and our Partners, both past and present, who have given their time and energy to elevate nature in people's minds, shift behaviours, build values, and establish norms that support the Sustainable Development Goals and uphold our constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.

This Youth Month, we honour every young person who has camped for the first time, built new skills, and found their voice as ambassadors of nature. To everyone who has been part of this journey, thank you. Here's to where we started, to 25 years, to the youth who carry this work forward, and to the next chapter of Changing Lives through Nature.

Skills Week at Drie Kuilen Nature Reserve

Our Training and Development team facilitated a week of practical skills training at Drie Kuilen Nature Reserve, working with 10 young adults who had graduated from the Prince Albert Skills School (PASS).

Prince Albert is a small municipality in the Central Karoo, with agriculture and tourism as its main economic drivers. Stats SA records an official unemployment rate of 19.4% for the area, making practical skills development especially important for young people looking for their next step after school.

PASS supports these young people by creating a space to keep learning, build confidence and develop practical skills. The skills week built on that work, covering snake awareness, brush cutter operation, and basic first aid, all practical tools linked to conservation, tourism, land care in the broader green economy.

Set in the Klein Karoo, surrounded by fynbos, renosterveld and Cape Mountain Zebra, Drie Kuilen Nature Reserve offered the perfect classroom for young people to connect with nature while building skills for the future. It's exactly the kind of work that has shaped Nature Connect since our earliest days, and one we're proud to keep building on as we begin our next 25 years.

These local movements show how even small conservation spaces contribute to wider ecological networks.

Building Livelihoods that simultaneously care for nature

South Africa's unemployment crisis is narrowing traditional pathways for young people, placing new attention on smaller, local forms of economic activity. Small and medium enterprises are increasingly central to job creation and economic resilience, particularly within the country's growing green economy.

This Youth Month, we're reminded that this shift is already visible at a local level. Community-based conservation and nature-linked enterprises are creating pathways where livelihoods, environmental protection, and social wellbeing intersect, work that has sat at the heart of our organisation since our earliest days.

Through Nature Connect's Youth in Nature programme, learners and community members in regions such as Calvinia recently completed a 17-day entrepreneurship course focused on applied, real-world business skills.

The short course extended this pathway by translating conservation knowledge into economic activity. Participants worked through budgeting, pricing, and cash flow, before launching and managing small enterprises under real trading conditions.

What emerged was a stronger sense of capability. Learners gained experience responding to real constraints, managing risk, and making decisions under pressure, practical skills that carry across conservation work, nature-based livelihoods, and wider economic participation.

This work reflects a broader principle, one we've carried for 25 years; when livelihoods are connected to local ecosystems, nature-positive decisions become part of everyday life.

Nobanda Primary School Shines on Biodiversity Day  

As Nature Connect marks 25 years of Changing Lives through Nature, Nobanda Primary School offers a perfect example of why this work matters.

The school recently took first place at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum's Biodiversity Day celebration, competing against several local primary schools under the theme "Acting Locally for Global Impact." Learners from Grades 6 and 7 captivated judges with a Mini SASS demonstration, a Trashion show, and a presentation on freshwater quality monitoring and waste management, as they confidently explained how their projects protect nature in their community.

Their win earned the school a brush cutter and writing materials for every participating learner, but the real value was in the recognition. It affirmed the learners’ hard work and showed that they are not only learning about environmental sustainability but actively putting it into practice in their communities.

Keeping Future Conservators in the System

Youth Month is a reminder that the next generation of conservation stewards is already here. Twenty-nine grade 7 learners from Greenfield Girls Primary School proved exactly that when they spent a day deep in the fynbos at Kenilworth Racecourse Conservation Area (KRCA), conducting plant surveys within quadrats, naming species with identification guides in hand, and tracking organisms through the wetlands to map out a living food chain from the ground up.

This is what environmental education looks like when it moves beyond the classroom. Not memorising facts about ecosystems, but standing inside one. Not reading about biodiversity, but counting it, touching it, following it through the water. When young people engage with nature this directly, something shifts. They stop seeing the environment as a subject and start seeing it as something they belong to.

What makes this possible is access. KRCA sits inside one of the most urbanised corridors in Cape Town, yet it holds some of the most biodiverse fynbos habitat on earth. Nature Connect has spent 25 years caring for places like this, not just for the plants and organisms that call them home, but for the schools, the learners, and the communities on their doorstep. These urban pockets of biodiversity are not extras. They are essential. They are where city kids get to find out that nature is not somewhere far away. It is right here, and it needs them.

Growing People, Growing the Movement

Nature Connect has always believed that when people grow, the work grows with them. This quarter, we are celebrating two of our own who chose to keep learning, keep pushing, and keep investing in the skills that make this organisation stronger.

Petro Botha, our Training and Development Team's Training Manager, has graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy in Zoology from Stellenbosch University. Petro joined Nature Connect in 2015 to establish the Gantouw Project, a pioneering rewilding initiative that reintroduced eland to Cape Flats Dune Strandveld. Her PhD, completed through Stellenbosch University, was rooted in that very work, examining vegetation responses, herbivory, and restoration in the urban conservation landscape. It is research born from real places and real commitment to understanding how restoration works on the ground. Today, Petro is our Training Manager. For someone whose daily work is designing the programmes that bring learners, educators, and communities into nature, this is not just a personal achievement. It means that every training session, every school programme, every facilitated experience in the field is now backed by a deeper scientific understanding of the ecosystems we are asking people to fall in love with. Congrats Petro!

Llewellyn Williams, our Media and Communications Manager, has completed his Postgraduate Diploma (NQF 8) in Digital Marketing through Regent Business School. Llewellyn's journey with Nature Connect began in 2023 when he joined as a Nature Conservation learnership candidate, bringing a marketing and communications background and a desire to root it in something that mattered. That combination turned out to be exactly what the organisation needed. Today he sits at the intersection of conservation knowledge and communications craft, shaping how Nature Connect's story reaches the people who need to hear it. In an organisation built on the belief that people must connect with nature to protect it, the ability to tell that story well and build the digital infrastructure to carry it further is not a support function. It is core to the mission.

This Youth Month, we celebrate 2 people who are young-at-heart, stepping into nature and discovering who they are. But growth does not stop with youth. Twenty-five years in, Nature Connect remains an organisation of people who believe that learning is part of the job, that curiosity belongs at every level, and that the best thing any of us can do for this movement is to keep becoming better at what we do.

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