IVN Natuureducatie (IVN Nature Education) brings people and nature closer together, from your front door to the National Parks. With this mission, IVN and a school take the first step from a grey to a green schoolyard: a place where children play, move, discover and learn outdoors in nature. The goal: €1,500 to get this project started.
Agriculture & Soil
IVN Natuureducatie brings people and nature closer together. IVN lets children, young people and adults experience how fun, healthy and important nature is. From your front door to the National Parks, from childcare to old age.
With around 170 professionals, more than 30,000 members and 160 volunteer branches, IVN organises nature activities, courses, projects and campaigns across the Netherlands. Building on that connecting, local strength, IVN works with partners in society towards a healthy, sustainable society in which nature is a natural part of everyday life again.
Core activities:
greening schoolyards, childcare centres and care locations
helping teachers and childcare staff teach outdoors more often, including through National Outdoor Lesson Day
helping residents green their gardens, streets and neighbourhoods, for example through Garden Rangers and Green Street Make-Overs
running communication and education in the 21 Dutch National Parks
training and supporting nature volunteers
IVN has already helped green around 2,000 schoolyards.
Children spend a large part of their day at school. Yet many schoolyards are still mostly paving stones and asphalt. That is a missed opportunity, for children and for nature:
Children lose touch with nature. Playing and exploring outdoors helps children develop. A grey schoolyard offers little to discover, while a green one invites them to play, move and learn.
Paved schoolyards get hot and flood. More green helps prevent heat stress and flooding. Plants and trees cool things down on hot days and absorb rainwater, whereas paving and asphalt hold on to heat.
Too little room for biodiversity. Green spaces nearby give plants and animals food, shelter and connections. A green schoolyard also becomes a home for bees, butterflies and birds.
A green schoolyard is good for children, for nature and for the neighbourhood around it.
When you shop through Terry, part of the shop’s marketing budget goes to IVN Natuureducatie, as a donation and at no extra cost to you.
Together we’re raising €1,500 to start the journey from a grey to a green schoolyard with a school. Your contribution helps to:
design a green schoolyard together with the school
set it up so that it challenges children to move, discover and learn
use it as an outdoor classroom and as a green space for the neighbourhood
It’s not just about adding green, but above all about making sure the schoolyard is truly used: for playing, learning and experiencing nature.
In this way you support not just one schoolyard, but a generation of children growing up with nature close by.
In 2025, IVN launched its handbook for the IVN Green Schoolyards approach. The approach combines three things: physical greening, participation of the school and the neighbourhood, and teaching, so that the schoolyard truly becomes a place to learn. IVN staff have been trained in this approach and are rolling it out at schools in their regions. In 2026, a renewed step-by-step plan follows that schools can use themselves.
Beyond the schoolyard, too, nature is increasingly part of lessons. In 2026, no fewer than 4,536 schools took part in National Outdoor Lesson Day. Research shows that teachers now teach outdoors 20 times a year on average, compared with 14 times in 2016.
And sometimes a schoolyard even gains new residents. Together with the Dutch Cultural Landscape Association (VNC) and RAVON, IVN creates ‘Tiny ponds’ at schools and childcare centres: small, safe ponds of 6 square metres that strengthen the habitat of the common toad, while children playfully discover what lives in and around the water.
Supporting through Terry is a great first step. Want to do even more? You can also:
Become an IVN member and discover nature with a local branch near you.
Become a nature volunteer and help out, for example, with outdoor lessons or on a schoolyard.
Find a nature activity near you.
Want to go further? Donate directly to IVN.
IVN Natuureducatie (Vereniging IVN) is based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (Chamber of Commerce 34147938). IVN has ANBI (public benefit) status and is a CBF-recognised charity. The CBF oversees, among other things, IVN’s financial management, how funds are spent and its transparency.
In 2025, 94.2 percent of all spending went to IVN’s mission. IVN is led by director Jan Dijstelbloem, overseen by a Supervisory Board. Many programmes are made possible in part by the Dutch Postcode Lottery.
Make schoolyards greener with every purchase
Shop as you normally would through Terry and help IVN bring children and nature closer together.
