Slice of rural life

An education company partners with a homestay business to offer urban children nature-based workshops during holidays, Zhao Yimeng reports.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Genevan philosopher and writer, suggested in his book On Education that the best thing humans can do for their own education is to participate in, and avoid interfering with, nature's way.

However, children today soak themselves in a digital world, surfing social media and doing homework through computers and smartphones. The disease control measures during this COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated the situation as most children living in cities have less access to nature and the rural environment.

During the Spring Festival holiday this year, a group of volunteers explored a way for nature-based education in the rural areas of East China's Zhejiang province and planned to replicate it in the future.

Volunteers from Aimkids, an education platform, took their own children to Xuaodi, a village in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, in February, to spend a special Chinese New Year in close contact with nature.

About a dozen children played and learned in the village that is surrounded by bamboo forests and dotted with vegetable farms.

The volunteers, who are college teachers, artists, designers, photographers and film directors, needed to have at least one skill such as children's education or event planning.