Growing Opportunities for Children and Youth
Andrea Koehle Jones is an award-winning environmental education advocate, climate journalist and United Nations Climate Observer.
“I want to give children opportunities to fall in love with nature because you protect what you love.” — Andrea Koehle Jones
Andrea founded The ChariTree Foundation on Earth Day 2006. She works to save species, safeguard habitats, and instill a love of nature in children by getting them outdoors to learn hands-on skills like tree planting.
This national non-profit connects local and international youth to climate education to help them survive and thrive today and lead a better tomorrow. Within the last decade, Andrea has empowered thousands of youth to plant trees across Canada, the United States, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nepal, Mongolia and Tanzania to mitigate climate change while helping them become climate leaders in their communities.
She has also helped build many outdoor classrooms and advocates nationally and internationally for more transformative, formal and informal climate and biodiversity education opportunities for children and youth. She also worked as a communications specialist for Greenpeace on its campaign to protect The Great Bear Rainforest, the largest intact temperate rainforest on earth.
A Canadian Climate Education Trailblazer
Formerly a journalist with CBC News and Newsworld International and a writer/producer with CBC4KIDS, she is a children’s book author, screenwriter and an award-winning documentary producer. Andrea is the author of The Wish Trees: How Planting Trees Can Help Make the World a Better Place and she donates 100% of profits to children’s climate education projects.
Andrea is a ‘Women for Nature’ mentor and a recipient of the 2011 Canadian Camping Association’s Award of Excellence for her national tree planting and environmental education programs. Her latest screenplay — The Hummingbird Trees (Diary of a Tree Girl) has advanced to:
#1 Family Television screenplay (One-hour) in the past month (Coverfly, August 2023)Top 7% of discoverable projects on Coverfly and top top 5% of fantasy projects (March 2024)FUN FACT: Andrea is a Canadian songwriter and she wrote the lyrics to the tree song “My Persephone” – a Jango Airplay Top Ten song.
Follow The ChariTree Foundation on Blue Sky to learn how you can advance children’s rights in climate action and connect youth to nature.