Children in today’s world are being adversely affected by their growing disconnection from the natural world. During the 2005 World Forum on Early Care and Education in Montreal, Canada, Wil Maheia from Belize, Monique Sweeting from the Bahamas, and John and Nancy Rosenow from the United States gave a presentation entitled “Helping Children Learn to Love the Earth Before We Ask Them to Save It.” During the Forum, others from around the world discussed the need for adults to help children re-connect to the joys of nature and to shield children from frightening environmental concerns before they are developmentally ready to understand them.
After the Montreal Forum, a planning group came together to create a Working Forum on Nature Education. The 2006 Forum brought together, for the first time, people from three diverse disciplines – landscape architects and community planners, environmentalists, and early childhood educators – to share information and plan for future collaborative efforts. Participants from 25 nations as diverse as Swaziland, Denmark, and Belize came together to learn from and with each other. One of the major outcomes of the Forum was the creation of the Nature Action Collaborative for Children (NACC).
After the 2006 Working Forum, a global regional representative structure was developed for NACC, which included up to three regional leaders for each of the six regions of the world. The initial group of regional leaders has been selected to provide as much representation as possible for each of the three disciplines.
The NACC Leadership Team convened for the first time at the 2007 World Forum on Early Care and Education in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Leaders.
The Nature Action Collaborative for Children hosted the 2008 Working Forum on Nature Education: New Tools for Connecting the World’s Children with Nature for 280 delegates from a wide range of professions from six continents gathered at the Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska. Delegates participated in the exploration of center and play yard transformations, gained tools for advocacy, and new ideas and new perspectivesThis is also when the Nature Action Collaborative for Children Leadership Team announced Wonder, the NACC newsletter.
The 2010 Connecting the World’s Children with Nature Action Forum had teams of people from around the world — all eager to develop concrete plans for ways to connect more children and families with the joys of the natural world — meet to share ideas, wrestle with common issues, and dream together. The World Forum Foundation worked, with the support of IBM, and collaboratively with the NACC Leadership Team and the Dimensions Foundation/ Nature Explore staff to create the Environmental Action Kit. This Kit serves as a helpful and important resource to people all over the world who wish to re-connect our children with the wonders of nature.
At the 2011 World Forum on Early Care and Education, Bishnu Bhatta, of Nepal, launched Mud Day.
A World Forum Foundation Working Forum, Designing Effective and Inspiring Spaces for Children, was co-hosted by the NACC and OnDesign Working Groups in Rotorua, New Zealand in 2015.