Resource Library
Feature Resource:
My Family Cares for Soil
My Family Cares for Soil is an educational children's booklet by Eliseus Bamporineza, a Soil Health Advocate and Youth4Soil member of the Coalition of Action for Soil Health (CA4SH).
It is an engaging and educational booklet that follows a young girl’s journey as she explores soil health monitoring alongside family members. Each family member uses specific tools, like pH meters, moisture meters, and drones, to gather and analyze data on soil quality, helping the child understand the importance of caring for soil to improve farming outcomes. This story introduces children to scientific tools in a relatable way, showing how testing soil’s pH, moisture, temperature, and nutrient levels can lead to healthier crops and more sustainable farming. Through vibrant illustrations and simple explanations, the booklet covers essential soil care practices like moisture checking, nutrient testing, and mapping soil types. Designed as a learning resource each family member in the book showcases a specific tool used to monitor and enhance soil health, making the content accessible and relatable for children in their quest to know about soil and the importance of gathering information about it.
Youth Initiatives for Scaling Soil Health: Advice from #Youth4Soil Global Advocates
The Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH) is a multistakeholder partnership committed to scaling soil health, globally. CA4SH places a high degree of importance on the role of youth as innovators and experts toward scaling global soil health. Youth are engaged through the #Youth4Soil movement, which includes a working group, mentorship opportunities, and support for speaking and engagement. We also want to highlight youth approaches to advocating for global soil health.
In April 2024, Roël D. Houdanon, Founder & Chief Technical Advisor, Land and Health Association shared an op-ed highlighting the role of youth in defending soil health. He presented several avenues for youth to get involved in scaling soil health:
Awareness Raising
Innovation & Technology
Policy Advocacy
Community Engagement
Education
Science & Research
We reached out to youth partners to learn about their individual approaches to scaling soil health through these thematic action areas.
These are their responses.
Advocate Briefs: Restoration of Rangeland Carbon Sinks for Increased Community Climate Resilience and Agricultural Outcomes
The Restoration of Rangeland Carbon Sinks focuses directly on addressing key knowledge and capacity gaps to enhance rangeland health monitoring with one key work area focused on building a gender-inclusive community of practice in rangeland health monitoring.
These individual profiles of rangeland health advocates reflect on the experiences of women and youth who have been engaged in training, skills development and data collection in their local rangelands.
Building a Gender-inclusive Community of Practice in Rangeland Health Monitoring
This brief summarizes the capacity development activities undertaken by the project Restoration of Rangeland Carbon Sinks to build gender inclusive community of practice in rangeland health monitoring.
Specifically, the brief outlines the critical need to address gender inequalities in rangeland health monitoring and synthesises reflections from women and youth on skills they have built through capacity development activities. The brief also highlights the impact these activities are having not only in their own agency and development, but also the wider implications and impact they want to create in their communities as a result of the skills they have built and been exposed to.