If you go down to the woods today, you may well bump into a bunch of schoolchildren with their teacher and a local timber merchant. What this would be is proof positive of the dramatic development of the Forest Education Initiative (FEI), which aims to teach children from eight years old upwards about the products and workings of the timber and forestry industry.

The scheme really is now stretching its net across the UK. At its heart are ‘clusters’, local co-operatives set up between timber and forestry businesses and bodies like woodland and nature trusts and conservation groups. These put together educational programmes for schools, including visits to woodlands and local timber companies. At the last count there were 46 such groups nationwide and rising.

“Our target is over 100 clusters and at our current rate of growth, we don’t feel that is many years away,” said FEI chairman Terence Mallinson.

To help achieve this figure and expand the whole FEI programme, it has launched its “Campaign for Growth”, which aims to raise £2.6m within five years.

But to realise his ambition to develop the scheme, Mr Mallinson stresses, money is not enough. The FEI also needs time and commitment from timber people.

“I’m currently touring the UK talking to area timber trade associations and my message is that the FEI isn’t principally after their money. What we want more than anything is their members’ input. The key to the whole initiative is participation.”

This, of course, begs the question of what the average timber trader gets in return for devoting time and energy to the FEI. One thing, according to the initiative’s supporters such as TTF president Geoff Rhodes, is satisfaction. But, more importantly, Mr Mallinson said that long term the scheme will help secure and grow markets for timber.

“Our aim is to increase young people’s appreciation of the environmental, social and economic potential of trees, woodlands and forests and the link between the tree and everyday wood products,” he said. “The premise is that the school pupils who are 15 today in 10 years’ time will be buyers and possibly also specifiers or architects. It’s the Jesuit approach. Get them young and you’ll keep them for life!”

Launch date

The FEI was launched by Mr Mallinson, then chairman of the TTF’s Forests Forever organisation, in 1992. The inspiration was the fact that the timber and forestry sectors were increasingly under siege from the environmentalist lobby.

“The teaching profession was being fed an almost undiluted diet of extreme environmentalist material about the industry. The message to children was that felling trees was bad full stop,” said Mr Mallinson. “There was nothing to balance or counter the criticism. Not even the Forestry Commission (FC) had an education policy.”

So, the FEI was born to fill this gap, with the FC as the key funder and the TTF also contributing.

From the outset the initiative was designed as a bottom-up operation. It has an executive committee and four regional co-ordinators and it centrally produces a range of teaching aids, plus books and other material for children. There is an FEI website too which is currently undergoing a major revamp (www.foresteducation.org). But Mr Mallinson insists this central structure is there to act as a ‘facilitator’, not to lay down rigid rules for FEI participants.

“The organisation exists to enable the clusters to do their work. They put together their own programmes liaising with schools in their area and their own literature, like the Tree Trunk handbook devised by a Scottish cluster. Each year the clusters also meet for a ‘network day’ to swap experiences. The FEI simply advises and helps fund cluster projects on a partnership basis, matching the money they put in.”

Highlighting just how established and embedded the FEI has become in its first 11 years, the line-up of patrons for its ‘Campaign for Growth’ is an impressive mix of the great and the good. They include Sir David Attenborough and former Friends of the Earth director Sir Jonathan Porritt, while the patron of the FEI itself is the Duke of Gloucester.

Potential funding

Of course, a lot of Mr Mallinson’s energies are now devoted to matching this list of patrons with a similarly impressive amount of cash from Campaign for Growth sponsors. The FEI is targeting a range of potential funders, including wood. for good, the Lotto and the City. While he is not plugging the money angle in presentations to local timber trade associations, Mr Mallinson is approaching individual timber businesses and has already received significant contributions.

In the meantime, to ensure that even more children get out into the woods and wood industry businesses across the country, the FEI will continue to ask for that other invaluable commodity – people’s time and commitment in support of their local cluster. The payback, it claims, will be a positive perception of wood among young people who may well become enthusiasts to join the timber trade, the forestry and timber industries. And the end result of that will be a positive future for UK timber plc.