Please enjoy the latest documentary on our YouTube channel: Children and Soil.

How do children gain awareness of ecology and appreciate the lives of their farming parents?

In this beautiful film, “Children and Soil” (2017), school children in India and West Bengal encounter their home communities’ soil. Soil for building, soil for playing, soil for growing food. How children from different situations see agriculture, how teachers develop school gardens, their different—often contrasting—approaches to learning about nature and farming are documented here.

The 48 minutes film primarily follows the work of ecological teacher-trainers from the Development Research Communication and Services Centre in Kolkata, an organization co-founded by ARI graduate Ardhendu S. Chatterjee.

“Children and Soil” was created by the initiative of Dr. Donata Elschenbroich and Dr. Otto Schweitzer, documentary filmmakers with over thirty years of expertise in educational films from a cross-cultural perspective. Donata has known ARI for over ten years and is an expert social researcher with numerous publications in Germany and internationally.

We are grateful that we can offer this film online for the first time and hope it will invite meaningful discussion.

— An article by Dr. Donata Elschenbroich on school gardens in English can be found in ARI’s journal euodoō
— A lecture by Ardhendu Chatterjee on environmental learning practice is in Japanese also printed in euodoō