On the 24th of January, we celebrated the International Day of Education!

This day is recognized and celebrated by the United Nations, and in honor of this special day, we bring you this extraordinary story from our partner in Indonesia, SEE Learning.

In 2025, the Global Tree Initiative (GTI) established a partnership with SEE Learning Indonesia to create a Tiny Forest project at local schools. You can read more about this project here. 

Chelsea Detari, the Associate Director & Education Team Leader at SEE Learning Indonesia, tells us how their schools celebrated the International Day of Education.

Youth are the engine for sustainable change

A story by Chelsea Detari.

Today was a beautiful milestone for the two public schools, SD 2 and SD 3, in Kelusa. The celebration was facilitated by our coordinator, Akia Merritt, thanks to the school principals, Mr. Eka and Mr. Saroja, and six SEE Learning facilitators-in-training from Emory University.

Together, we explored International Education Day by using the SEE Learning framework, a K-12 program designed at Emory University to educate both the hearts and minds of children. This curriculum uses education to cultivate compassionate individuals, schools, and communities by incorporating the science of compassion into daily learning.

Youth are the engine for sustainable change, and today these students were active partners in reimagining their own learning. We really wanted to focus on cultivating a sense of gratitude and recognition that their voices matter, they are a part of a society that cares for them, and that they have the power to make a difference in the world starting with their own garden.

To bring these concepts to life for the students, we focused on two specific activities from the SEE learning curriculum: Kindness drawing and the web of interdependence.

• Kindness Drawing: This activity is designed to make kindness “visible.” Every day, we experience countless acts of care, often even from strangers. As the students reflected on and drew these moments, we watched their body language physically shift, softening and opening up as they shared their memories of being cared for. We notice each time we facilitate this activity, so much room is created for more hope, deeper learning, and a sense of safety to truly explore and grow.

• The Interdependence Web: Each group was given a seed destined for our future Tiny Forest. They mapped out the “web” of causes and conditions that made that single seed possible. It was a profound lesson in how nothing exists in isolation; our education, our food, and our very lives depend on a vast, invisible network of people and events. These activities support students in seeing how they are an integral part of the world and how all of their actions truly do matter in this web of interdependence. We noticed a shift in gratitude as students shared their webs.

The students explored their creativity with so much laughter today. Sitting right next to the site of the future forest, they had several “aha!” moments!

They realized that this project, and the opportunities they have, depend on the act of kindness from countless others. For the first time, the children expressed a deep sense of gratitude for GTI, seeing you not just as an organization or strangers, but as caring people who are working to make a forest possible for them.

The garbage dump is officially gone, and soon it will be replaced by life!

Without these activities and reflections today, it would be easy to overlook the depth of this tiny forest. Education makes it possible to have gratitude, appreciate compassion, and have a sense of hope for the future.

For us at SEE learning Indonesia, the Tiny Forest is compassion and love made visible. It’s a safe space for education of the heart and mind. It is a living reminder that when we nurture and care for something, it grows into something that provides nourishment, beauty, and shelter for many people.

One student said it best, looking at the cleared land in amazement after the activities: “I can’t believe that where there was once a garbage dump, there will now be a forest.”

Thank you for this opportunity.

Lastly, Chelsea tells us that after the beautiful day, they reflect together, and the following message was shared by their group:

“Every time I read the Interdependence Web lesson in SEE Early Elementary, I am deeply moved and have a shocking reminder that the solid object that I see is a result of so many other causes and conditions. So much and so many to be thankful for in every single thing we look at or experience! This time, we did it a bit differently and asked the children who and what may the tiny seed benefit in the future?

One of the SEE Facilitators, Nath, had a big aha-moment that made us all smile and reflect as well. When the children were contemplating how the lavender seed may add benefit, they wrote down bees. And then, from bees, they said that it would be food for the bees. The food from the bees allows the bees to live and make honey. And that honey adds lots of sweetness to our world. Nath was very touched by this, and so was I.”

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Dear Chelsea, SEE Learning Indonesia team, the children, and everyone involved there – thank you so much for the beautiful story! We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to work with you and to learn from you. You are clearly not only planting seeds into the soil, but planting magical seeds of beauty, love, kindness, and compassion into the youth of our world. Thank you for your incredible work, passion, and for the collaboration with the Global Tree Initiative. We appreciate you!

Have a look at this heart-warming video, below!