What we care for today shapes tomorrow…..
Let’s create a greener future together!
Our Future Starts Here
Sometimes, when you are busy planting seeds, running sessions, building exhibitions, supporting volunteers, packing resources and heading from one community event to the next, you don’t always get the chance to stop and look at just how much has grown.
Over the past year, that is exactly what we have been doing with Green Influencers VANEL.
What started with children learning about nature, growing and caring for the world around them is becoming something much bigger: a growing environmental journey from our youngest Little Green Influencers and their families, through primary-aged children, to Post-16 young people, Green Volunteers and the wider community.
And we are only in the first year of our five-year journey.
From one small action…
VANEL is part of the partnership delivering Our Futures Starts Here (OFSH) over the next five years. The VANEL Green Influencers and Little Green Influencers projects are integral to this.
Read our overview of OFSH here. Or visit the partner website.
All about Green Influencers here.
Much, much more information, news and photos can be found on the Green Influencers Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/GreenInfluencersVANEL
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At the heart of Green Influencers is a very simple belief:
Every child and young person can make a difference.
For a two-year-old, that might begin with planting a seed, watering a flower or discovering a minibeast in the garden.
For an older child, it might mean caring for a growing space, completing a Discovery Trail, learning about wildlife or thinking about how something can be reused rather than thrown away.
For a young person, it could become researching an environmental issue, creating a campaign, sharing their ideas with the public, volunteering in their community or helping shape opportunities for the young people who come after them.
There isn’t just one way to care for Our Earth.
We want children and young people to DISCOVER, CREATE, CARE, GIVE and SHARE – finding the ways of taking action that mean something to them.
Look how far we’ve come!
Between December 2025 and August 2026, we delivered 219 sessions and activities, with 881 recorded child and young person engagements, excluding babies.
We also took Green Influencers beyond our regular sessions, creating 18 community pop-up and event opportunities and reaching families across Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Immingham and surrounding communities.
Our Discovery Trails have been completed 390 times, encouraging children and families to explore, search, read, talk and learn together.
But some of our favourite moments can’t really be captured by numbers.
They are the muddy hands after gardening. The child proudly showing us something they have made from materials that might otherwise have been thrown away. Families exploring a trail together. A young volunteer gaining the confidence to talk to people at an event. A piece of children’s artwork hanging somewhere public for hundreds – sometimes thousands – of people to see.
Those moments are the real story of Green Influencers.
Little Green Influencers – small people making a big difference
Some of our youngest Green Influencers have already shown us that you are never too young to make a difference.
Our Little Green Influencers and their families took part in a Sponsored Read, raising over £500 towards free books for children.
Those funds helped us provide nature and environmental fiction and non-fiction books linked to our Discovery Trail activities, alongside donated pre-loved books.
For us, this was about much more than giving away a book.
It connected reading, nature, environmental learning and social action, while helping reduce financial barriers so that children could take a book home and continue discovering, reading and learning with their families.
Our Little Green Influencers didn’t just take part in something – together, they helped create something that could be shared with other children.
Another small action creating a much bigger difference.
Our Caring Sun – created together
One of the biggest parts of our journey so far has been Our Caring Sun. And this really was something created together.
Our Caring Sun was created through contributions from across our Green Influencers groups, with children and young people from as young as two years old helping to make the artwork, ideas and messages that eventually came together as one large collaborative installation.
Our Little Green Influencers, Green Garden Influencers and Franklin NEWT young people all had a part to play – showing beautifully how children and young people of very different ages can contribute to something together.
The Our Caring Sun Discovery Trail was created by our Littlecoates Green Garden Influencers, giving children the opportunity not only to learn about environmental issues themselves, but to turn their learning and ideas into something that could then be enjoyed by hundreds of other children and families.
Alongside the Care Cloud and Nourishing Rain, Our Caring Sun became much more than an exhibition. It became a way to start conversations about nature, renewable energy, wellbeing, our environment, our communities and the future we want to create.
Helios
Helios exhibition at Grimsby Minster was the start of our Our Future Starts Here (OFSH) journey. The world renowned piece of art in the Minster started a focus on the environment and one which the Green Influencers team and children have followed through ever since. Read about Helios from April 2026 here.
Beginning with that Helios exhibition at Grimsby Minster, the installation then travelled into schools, Family Hubs, community events and Cleethorpes Library.
The important thing was that children’s work didn’t simply stay inside the room where it was created.
We took their ideas out into their community and gave them a public voice.
During just 12 days of the full Our Caring Sun installation at Cleethorpes Library, the library’s public counter recorded more than 5,277 visitors.
Imagine being two, five, ten or seventeen years old and knowing that something you helped to create has travelled around your community and been seen by thousands of people.
That matters.
And our community helped decide what comes next
We didn’t want to decide the next chapter on our own.
Cast your vote…
As Our Caring Sun travelled, we invited children, young people, families and members of the community to vote for the CARE ACTION theme they wanted us to explore next.
An incredible 2,093 votes were cast.
And the winner, with 491 votes, was Animals & Insects.
Those votes have directly shaped our next adventure: Our Caring Creatures.
It means the people who have taken part in Green Influencers haven’t simply joined our activities – they are helping us decide where we go next.
COMING NEXT
Our Caring Creatures will be the next adventure for Green Influencers following on from the success of
Our Caring Sun
Growing with our young people
Our partnership with Franklin NEWT – Nature, Environment & Wildlife Team has also allowed the Green Influencers journey to grow into Post-16.
Young people have researched environmental issues, developed campaigns, created artwork and poetry, supported public events, volunteered their time and helped us communicate environmental messages to wider audiences.
Most importantly, we have listened to them.
Their experiences and feedback have helped us develop our Green Volunteer Pathway, creating more flexible and accessible ways for young people to begin volunteering, try different opportunities, build confidence and progress at their own pace.
Alongside listening to our young people, we have used the NHS Youth Volunteering Toolkit to help guide our thinking and learn from wider good practice in youth volunteering. The toolkit has provided us with a valuable framework, while the voices and real experiences of our young people are helping us turn that learning into something that works for them here in North East Lincolnshire.
Already, 8 young people have become involved as Green Volunteers and, together, they have contributed nearly 200 hours of volunteering from March to August.
Those hours represent so much more than a number. They are hours spent supporting children and families, caring for gardens and community spaces, helping at events, sharing environmental messages, trying new experiences and giving something back to their community.
We hope this becomes much more than a volunteering programme.
We want it to become a pathway through which young people can recognise the skills they already have, discover new ones, grow in confidence and see that their contribution to their community reall does matter.
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Did you see our video? Working with Hammond House, VANEL Green Influencers tells the story of Our Caring Sun…
Growing through our community
One of the greatest strengths of Green Influencers has been the community that has grown around it.
Over this first year, we have developed and strengthened relationships with a wide range of schools, Family Hubs, colleges, community organisations, libraries, environmental groups, creative partners, venues, volunteers and local events.
These partnerships have helped us take children’s and young people’s work beyond their regular sessions and into the places where people live, learn, meet and spend time together.
They have provided spaces for exhibitions, volunteering opportunities, events, environmental activities, storytelling, gardening, creative projects and public engagement. They have helped us reach new families and given children and young people opportunities to share their ideas with audiences they may never otherwise have reached.
Some partnerships have supported one special event. Others are developing into longer-term relationships and new opportunities for the future.
Every partnership has added another connection to the Green Influencers journey.
We are incredibly grateful to everyone who has welcomed us, shared their knowledge, offered a space, given their time, helped at an event, supported a young volunteer, promoted an opportunity or simply said, “Yes, we’d love to be involved.”
Green Influencers may begin with children and young people, but creating a greener, more caring future is something none of us can do alone.
It takes a community – and we are very proud of the community that is growing with us.
Small actions really can create something bigger
Perhaps that has been our biggest learning from this first year.
Climate and environmental action doesn’t always have to start with something huge.
It can start with planting something.
Picking up a watering can.
Passing on a school jumper rather than throwing it away.
Turning leftover materials into something new.
Reading a book about nature with your child.
Completing a trail.
Casting a vote.
Giving an hour of your time.
Sharing an idea.
Caring for a garden, a creature, another person or a place that matters to you.
When hundreds of those small actions begin to join together, they become something much bigger. They become Our Legacy.
Our Future Starts Here
For us, Our Future Starts Here isn’t simply a phrase or a project.
It is what we see happening every week.
It starts with a two-year-old planting their first seed.
It grows with a child discovering something new about the world around them, a family choosing a small action they can take together, a young person sharing an idea, a Green Volunteer giving their time, and a community opening its doors and saying, “How can we help?”
The children and young people taking part today are the future gardeners, artists, designers, scientists, teachers, engineers, environmentalists, volunteers, neighbours and community leaders who will help shape what comes next.
We don’t know where every small experience will lead.
But we can give children and young people opportunities to care, create, discover, contribute and be heard – and help them grow up knowing that their choices and actions have value.
That is why we believe Our Future Starts Here – with them, with us, and with the small things we choose to do today.
And we’re only getting started…
Our first year has shown us what can happen when environmental learning, creativity, families, youth voice, volunteering, partnerships and community action come together.
There is still so much more we want to discover and develop.
Our Caring Creatures is beginning to take shape.
Our Green Volunteer Pathway continues to grow with the young people helping us develop it. New partnerships and opportunities are emerging, and we will continue finding creative ways to take children’s and young people’s environmental messages beyond our sessions and into the wider community.
Most of all, we want every child and young person who joins us – whether for one activity or for several years – to leave knowing something very simple:
Your ideas matter.
Your voice matters.
Your actions matter.
And you can make a difference.
Because what we care for today shapes tomorrow…..
Let’s create a greener future together!
Our Future Starts Here.
Could Our Caring Sun visit you?
Our Caring Sun exhibition is continuing its journey, and we would love to hear from schools, libraries, community venues, organisations and other spaces interested in hosting the exhibition.
Bringing the exhibition to your venue is an opportunity to showcase environmental work created by local children and young people, start conversations about caring for people and planet, and help their messages reach even more people across our community.
Next Steps
If you would like to explore hosting Our Caring Sun at your venue, please contact:
Sam Smith: Green Mentor – Green Influencers VANEL
sam@vanel.org.uk
We’d love to help Our Caring Sun continue its journey – and see where it shines next.
Follow us on Facebook for every update from the programme.
