Touch the World is an initiative seeking to educate communities around environmental and social sustainability while empowering them to become confident in themselves and responsible stewards of the Earth.
Building on the installation Please Do Touch, Yaniv has used these artworks to create a workbook, aptly named, Touch the World, to use as a resource to communicate his messages and to inspire action. The workbook itself combines journal space and colouring in pages to encourage the reader to think about how they will create action in their own life toward meeting the five Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) the Please Do Touch installation are based upon.
The project provides an interdisciplinary approach to learning about mindfulness and sustainability by inspiring concrete actions that address the goals.
The Touch the World workbook is a beautiful combination of thought provoking messaging and creative space to be mindful, intentional, and create action steps toward adopting sustainable practices into your life. Not only for the world, but for your own wellbeing too!
The Touch the World project is run under The Fast Track Inclusion Trust. The Trust works to create transformative and measurable outcomes for vulnerable children and their families through emerging community leadership. The trust carries out social innovation applied research to accelerate social inclusion for marginalised people.
As part of the Youth Leadership Development initiative run by the Trust, Yaniv has had the support to launch the Touch the World project. The project is multifaceted and utilises the Please Do Touch installation and the workbook to, Touch the World.
To date Yaniv has used the project to launch the Sustainable Schools project, with this yet to extend across all of New Zealand, and the launch of Touch New Zealand to begin in early 2022.
In September 2015, world leaders agreed to 17 global goals for sustainable development aiming at ending extreme poverty, inequalities and climate change by 2030. Yaniv has chosen five of these goals to focus his efforts on, to do his part toward sustainability.
The UN described these SDGs as a means to grow resilient communities in a sustainable environment. Nestled within this inspirational future for humanity is children’s right to flourish and be happy.
The Touch the World projects will enable young people to gain an understanding as to how to increase self-care as they raise their awareness about the connection between our environment and our wellbeing, through work on these Sustainable Development Goals. Specifically, the project seeks to extend options for education beyond mainstreams options.
The Touch the World projects provide an interdisciplinary approach to learning about mindfulness and sustainability by inspiring concrete actions that address the goals. The workbook offer an educational framework that does not currently exist in schools. Teachers who have piloted this project with students are excited at the impact it has had throughout this little rural school. The program has expanded the students' understanding of sustainability and inspired them to make actionable plans. This awareness and training in holistic and 'big-picture' thinking is valuable in forming well-rounded and thoughtful students who know about self-care and about being stewards of the Earth. In 2022, the project is being expanded to the general public and addresses community issues such as poverty and sustainable cities and communities- adding to the former environmental focus of the project.
