Shweta and I passionately believe in building the next generation of change-makers and that this starts with our youngest children. Earth Warriors is an early childhood education curriculum that teaches young children (3-7 years old) about climate change and sustainability through play-based activities and a solutions-oriented approach.
We have two programmes: one for parents at home and one for teachers in schools. The purpose of our lessons and activities is for children to learn key concepts about climate change & sustainability in an age-appropriate way, understand the importance of their role as an “Earth Warrior” in protecting our home, planet Earth and get them excited to be a part of the Earth Warriors community. Our curriculum has been months in the making, with multiple teachers and parent pilots across 8 different countries and we are thrilled to finally launch our curriculum to the world.
Earth Warriors is more than just a curriculum though. We are bringing together a global community of parents, teachers and children that are passionate about protecting our planet and taking climate action. The best part for us has been watching little Earth Warriors in action, falling in love with our Mother Earth and really embracing their Earth Warrior identities.
How did you come up with the idea for the company?
Earth Warriors was set in motion when Shweta and I met in early 2019 and discovered a mutual interest in early childhood education and a shared belief that children’s early years are critical and can support them in becoming future change-makers. Last year, Shweta started a platform in India to build a sustainable community of people and businesses who create less waste.
She realised that it’s very hard to change adult behaviour. We both thought it would be great if children were taught about sustainability and climate change from a young age so living a sustainable life with sustainable habits became as natural to them as brushing your teeth is to us. We did our research and realised that although there are many climate change curriculums aimed at children ages 10 and above, there were not many resources for the early childhood space.
In addition, less than 5 countries in the world have climate change as part of their mandatory curriculum and none have it as part of their early years’ curriculum. This is what inspired Earth Warriors. In the summer of 2020, we were both in a transition phase as I had just completed my masters from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Shweta was moving back to Delhi after many years in London. We decided the timing was right for us both to take a risk and start our own organisation.
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How has the company evolved during the pandemic?
Launching our startup during the pandemic has brought us an equal share of challenges and opportunities that we have been grateful to learn from. We initially envisioned Earth Warriors as a curriculum for teachers in schools. However, when we launched, we received overwhelming interest from parents in how they can teach these topics to their young children at home.
That prompted us to design a second programme: our at-home programme for parents. School closures due to the pandemic meant that we had to pivot to focus on our parent programme in the first quarter of 2021. Now that schools have re-opened, we are piloting and finalising our school curriculum for the next school year. We have been reflecting on the tremendous opportunity this year has brought us despite all its challenges. Earth Warriors was born this year from the space we had to explore our passion for early childhood education and tackling issues of climate change and sustainability.
What can we hope to see from Earth Warriors in the future?
Eight months ago we decided to focus on Earth Warriors full time because we truly believe in the impact it can have. We never anticipated the enthusiasm and support we’d receive from parents, schools and our wider community. We have lots of exciting new programmes and products coming up this year including 2 more at-home parent modules, our full school curriculum for the next school year and two books!
