Welcome
This homepage provides a free library of resources for anyone who cares about the future of our Fenlands ecosystems: the rivers, the wetlands, the peat — and the people who depend on all three. These resources are made for teachers and educators, youth leaders, community groups and local decision makers, mostly by young people who live here.
Everything on this page is ready to use. Download a slide deck and run a workshop next week. Print the flyer for a noticeboard. Adapt the handbook so it is about your own patch of water. Take the youth report, declaration or petition into a meeting.
The Fens are changing under our feet. These are the tools we wish someone had handed us. Please take them, use them, and tell us what to improve.
The Fenlands Youth Advisors
The Fenlands Youth Advisors are a network of young people founded in Cambridge and Peterborough in 2026, now with members from communities right across the Fens. We formed because decisions about water here are made decades ahead, and the people who will live with them longest are rarely in the room.
We are glad to advise. If you are shaping local, regional or national policy on wetlands, rivers, ecosystems or flood resilience, we can offer a youth perspective, join a panel, respond to a consultation or give evidence.
We also come to you. Our members have resources, games and handbooks, and are happy to provide one or two hour workshops in local schools and at community events on the water systems and lands of our fens — biology, geography, ecology, citizenship or social science — free of charge. Just contact us through this form, and we will place you in touch with a trained youth leader near you.
Download and Deploy these New Education and Awareness Resources
Our Fens, Our Water, Our Future: A youth-friendly educational flyer
A colourful double-sided informational flyer, folded twice into six panels, small enough for a coat pocket, school bag or community booth table. It opens with the post at Holme Fen, driven flush with the ground in the 1850s and now standing four metres clear of it, then sets out what drainage has cost and how fenlands protection, restoration and sustainable use can make a difference. Every figure is sourced to Natural England, the Great Fen, the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the National Farmers Union or the Nature-Friendly Farming Network.
This little flyer offers a fast and easy way to learn about fenlands as flood defences, or communicate their importance to others. Print a stack for a class, a club, a parents evening, a village hall event, a library counter, or a market stall. Hand them to pupils to take home after a lesson. The cover carries a QR code straight to the evergreen youth declaration and this educational homepage.
Print A4, landscape, double sided, flipped on the short edge.
Restoring Our Fens Workshop: A presentation with games and activities
Twenty two slides and a set of activities, in two versions: Years 5 to 8, and Years 9 to 13. This presentation begins with systems thinking, moves into how the peat sinks and why the rivers now sit above the fields, and follows a raindrop from cloud to pump. A sponge experiment, a pond drawing task and a group discussion are built in.
This presentation and related student workshop arrives ready to run. No preparation beyond reading the notes, no equipment beyond a sponge and a tray. The science is accurate and the language is pitched to the year group, so the workshop (and your students or community group) can fit easily into geography, science or citizenship class without rewriting your scheme of work.
Heron Habitat Helpers Handbook: A template to tailor for your school, community, business or family
A short illustrated guide that helps children and youth work out what lives in their local water and how to learn and look after local biodiversity in the fens. Designed to be enjoyed by all, from a school in March, Northampton or King’s Ely, to a community club in Whittlesey, Wisbech or Littleport, to a class in Cambridge, Peterborough or Oundle, to any other group anywhere across the fens — youth can create a personalised handbook focused on your own local area.
This handbook file is editable throughout. Swap in your own logo, photographs, your nearest drain or river, the birds your pupils, friends or community members actually see. Download this free template (a simple six-page file), and the front cover logo, photos, text, the species and the places are yours to change. Print the free handbook as a booklet for a field trip or activity, or run a term long project for your group or class to create its own special edition.
Cambridge and Peterborough Wetland City Accreditation Report: Findings from a survey and study by local youth
A report written by young people making the case for Cambridge and Peterborough to seek Ramsar Wetland City accreditation, an international recognition for cities that protect and value the wetlands around them. This report, based on research, surveys and consultations, explains what accreditation involves, what the two cities already have in their favour, and what would need to change.
This report matters because it turns a good intention into a process with criteria and a timeline. If you are a councillor, an officer or a community group, this report is a briefing you can carry into a committee without having to write something entirely new. If you teach, this report offers a living example of how we can keep international convention promises through local decisions, policy-change and action.
Fenlands Restoration for Flood Defence and Water Quality: A presentation for intergenerational meetings with decision makers
A briefing built for the room where decisions are actually made: drainage boards, water companies, councillors, planners and scientists, with young people presenting alongside them. This briefing carries the technical detail those audiences expect, including subsidence figures, a flood attenuation hydrograph, a carbon balance chart and an honest table of trade-offs covering arable land, farm livelihoods and methane.
The key message in this presentation is the importance of youth engagement, dialogue and respectful partnership. The presentation proposes ways that nature based measures can work alongside the pumps and banks, not instead of them, which is why this presentation is helpful for the people who maintain and defend both grey and green infrastructure.
Fenlands Futures Youth Declaration: A youth declaration and petition for nature-based flood management in the East Anglia fens
The Fenlands Futures Youth Declaration is a short statement written and agreed by young people from across the Fens. It sets out what we believe the water in this landscape is for, what we are asking of the people who manage it, and what we commit to doing ourselves. This Declaration is deliberately brief enough to read aloud in one go.
The petition carries key asks for leaders and decision makers, and every name makes our voices harder to set aside. Read the declaration in an assembly, at a parish council meeting, or at the start of a workshop, and invite everyone interested to sign in person or online. If your school or group would like to endorse this Declaration formally, you are welcome. Simply email us and we will add your name.
Use the printable sheet to collect signatures in person at an assembly, stall or community meeting.
Youth Voices for Wetlands, Clean Water and SDG 6: A special issue of the by-youth for-youth Harmony Online Journal
A special issue of our online youth journal, given over entirely to wetlands, fresh water and Sustainable Development Goal 6. This journal, edited by youth for youth, gathers writing, research and photography by young people from here and elsewhere, on everything from peat carbon and river health to what clean water actually means where you live.
This journal is worth your time because it shares perspectives, insights and ideas of young people worldwide on wetlands conservation, restoration and sustainable use, as well as flood resilience, river system management and other issues relating to clean water and sanitation, a crucial priority worldwide.
For teachers, this online youth journal can provide model texts and ideas to help students start writing about local and global sustainability, and a bank of prompts. For youth leaders, this journal is an open invitation to share your ideas and artwork about sustainability challenges and solutions that concern you, because the next issue needs contributors. For everyone else, the journal is simply good reading — and hopefully a bit of inspiration to brighten your days.
Using these resources
All of these resources are free to use, copy and adapt. If you run a workshop with them, or change something and make it better, we would like to hear about it.
Invite a Fenlands Youth Advisor
If you would like a Fenlands Youth Advisor to visit your school, group or meeting, fill in the form below, or write to us at editors@harmonyyouthvoices.com.
Recommended resources
Trusted organisations for exploring the Fens and wetland wildlife:
- The Great Fen project — a large-scale Fenland restoration in Cambridgeshire.
- Wicken Fen (National Trust) — visit a living fen near Cambridge.
- The Wildlife Trusts — wetland wildlife guides and local reserves.
- WWT — Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust — wetlands and the species that depend on them.
- RSPB — birds of the Fens and how to help them.
More from the Global Youth Council
Writing by our members on the fens, water and youth participation:
- Protecting our Fenlands: A Short History of East Anglia Biodiversity Ravages, Resistance and Rewilding — how the fens were drained, what was lost, and what rewilding could return (Harmony, Issue 2).
- Nature-Based Flood Management in Our East Anglia Fens and Water Systems: Intergenerational Insights — what came out of the youth working session and the intergenerational roundtable of 22 July 2026.
- Whose Decision Is It? Law, Youth and the Delivery of SDGs 6 and 7 — reflections from our UN panel on clean water and clean energy.
Harmony Online Journal - Youth Voices on Science, Law and Sustainability 