Squirrel Forest Campaign
(Aktion Eichhörnchen)

How to carry out your own Squirrel Forest Campaign.

Are you a good organizer? Do you enjoy projects like this ? Yes? Then your own Squirrel Forest Campaign can get underway!

Project Planning Guide for every kind of site with old trees (mother trees)

1. Contact primary school (or similar) education authorities. Present and discuss the campaign using the information you have collected. Normally the idea will meet with approval as most teachers and head teachers are only too aware of the issue of climate change.
2. Same procedure as above, but at the local forestry commission or similar institution. Request a site on which you are allowed to collect suitable tree seed. In addition ask for sites on which there are old conifers where undergrowth is scheduled to create mixed forests. There are masses of such sites. On the other hand maybe someone already has access to bare land which is designated to be forested by direct seeding. After all it is economically and ecologically the best way to avoid the disadvantages of conventional forestation methods.
3. Look for a sponsor who will transport all the participants to the forest and back - mostly bus companies which drive children to school. Alternatively organize car pools or car sharing.
4. Ask the forestry commission or the owner of the forest for support in organizing extra activities, e.g. a campfire.
5. Get someone to donate a large potato, sausage etc. for each child to roast at the campfire.
6. Ask a dairy or food processing company for a few hundred 5 litre buckets for the children to put the tree seed in which they have collected, or get each child to bring a small bucket.
7. Find a sponsor for 200-300 small trowels which the children can use to bury the seed.
8. Set out a time schedule. Preparations before the summer holidays, seeding event from the middle of October to the beginning of December.

Squirrel Forest Campaign
downloads:
Project Planning Guide (PDF/70kb)
Project Organization Plan (PDF/69kb)

Everything organized? Off you go!

Don’t forget press, radio and TV reporters will love to be there, too!

Project Organization Plan

1. Access information at www.waldsaat.org
2. Obtain printed information, enlist schools, determine number of participants.
3. Inform forestry and ensure project can be started. Arrange meeting to inspect seeding areas.
4. Find sponsors.
5. Recruit helpers.
6. Set out project schedule.
7. Inform media.
8. Prepare project report.
9. Enjoy!

Time Schedule For One Day’s Forest Seeding Event (Example)

By 9 a.m. Arrival of participants at meeting point.

9.05 Short welcoming speech and instructions (briefing).

9.15 Warming-up game: Squirrel (see below).

9.30 Hand out buckets. Participants collect seeds.

10.00 Participants reassemble and walk to seeding areas.

10.15 Break around campfire.

10.45 Participants assemble, receive instructions, spread out and sow seeds.

11.15 Participants reassemble and walk back to pick-up point.

11.30 Short final speech and goodbyes.

Warming-up Game: Squirrel

Each project leader has 6 acorns ready for each participant. These are now shared out. In an adjacent part of the forest (preferably conifers) each participant has the task of hiding the 6 acorns in 6 different places, just like the squirrels do for the winter. After no more than 2 minutes you call back all the participants. Then you impress on them that their survival in winter depends on these 6 acorns. That’s it! Now you ask the participants to retrieve their own 6 acorns from their hiding places and present them to you. Again in no more than 2 minutes. Participants who have all 6 acorns line up to your left, those with less to your right. Now a few fi nal words from you because only about a third have found all 6 acorns again:” In real forest life only 5 or 10 … ‘squirrels’ would have survived the winter. But countless acorns which haven’t been found have a chance to grow into trees. Perfect nature!”

Don’t forget to send photos and reports about your project if you would like us to put them online here at our website!

Here is a special US version: Squirrel Forest Campaign (US version)

If you have any further questions, please look at our FAQ Squirrel Forest Campaign or contact us. We are only too pleased to help.

Squirrel Forest Campaign. Children making forests the right way – and grown-ups, too!

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