Project Sustainability Collective: Why We Chose the Bee as Our Symbol
- liliannk
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
When we chose bees as our logo, we weren't just selecting a symbol—we were embracing a philosophy that mirrors everything we believe about transformative educational practice. Just as bees are essential to the flourishing of our natural world, our approach to sustainability education is designed to pollinate learning environments, creating vibrant ecosystems where children, educators, and communities can thrive together.
The Wisdom of the Hive: Understanding Collaborative Growth
Bees demonstrate something remarkable that resonates deeply with our work: they understand that true sustainability emerges from collective wisdom, not individual effort. In the hive, every bee has a role, yet they work with extraordinary flexibility and responsiveness to their environment. Scout bees don't impose solutions—they discover the richness already present in the landscape and then return to share their findings through an intricate dance that guides the entire community towards abundant resources.
This aligns with our approach to working with educational teams. Rather than arriving with predetermined programs, we act as scout bees, carefully observing the unique strengths, vision, and context of each learning community. We help teams discover the 'pollen and nectar' that already exists within their practice and vision—building on what's already growing rather than starting from scratch.
Like the PLC team we worked with, who transformed their outdoor spaces by building on children's passion for water exploration, educators' interest in upcycling, and the ecosystems of seeds, we see how different players bring their unique gifts to the sustainability journey. Similarly, Heritage College ELC demonstrated this collaborative strength when their assessment revealed exceptional scores in social and cultural understanding, with their team regularly involving children in decision-making about sustainability initiatives.
Pollination: The Power of One Moment
Bees don't just take from flowers—they give back, creating the conditions for new growth and abundance. This reciprocal relationship is at the heart of our sustainability work. When we integrate our five-domain approach to sustainability into what teams are already doing, we're not adding a burden; we're revealing the connections that make learning more meaningful and impactful.
A powerful example of this pollination in action comes from the Bush Kinder program in Western Australia. The children regularly foraged and collected in their nature space, but one day they discovered a small frog nestled inside a gumnut. They were astonished—and then deeply moved when they realised they had effectively removed the frog's home, protection, and place.
The children carefully returned the frog to its home, but the learning didn't stop there. Over time, they transformed into vigilant protectors of the nature reserve they were privileged to visit regularly. They became so invested in their role as environmental stewards that when workers arrived to do maintenance and tree management, the children didn't hesitate to interrogate them about their practices, ensuring the natural habitat would remain protected.
This story illustrates perfectly how a single moment of connection—finding the frog in the gumnut—pollinated an entire learning community's understanding of their relationship with the natural world. Like bees moving from flower to flower, the children's experience spread throughout their program, creating lasting change in how they saw themselves as part of the ecosystem.
The Royal Jelly of Sustained Growth
Perhaps most remarkably, bees can transform any larva into a queen through royal jelly—a special nutrition that unlocks extraordinary potential. This speaks to our belief in the power of sustained, contextual support rather than one-off professional development sessions. Just as royal jelly requires consistent, intentional nurturing over time, embedding sustainability requires ongoing dialogue, careful resourcing, and collaborative reflection.
Our work with teams focuses on creating the conditions that allow sustainability thinking to flourish. Heritage College ELC's assessment revealed they were 'good at planting the seeds but not nurturing the growth'—a metaphor that captures exactly why the royal jelly approach matters. Like the bees' careful attention to developing queens, we provide the sustained partnership that helps teams develop the leadership capacity, systems thinking, and collaborative skills that allow sustainable practices to evolve and adapt organically.
Place-Based Wisdom: Reading Your Landscape
Bees are master readers of their local environment. They adapt their foraging patterns to seasonal changes, respond to weather conditions, and have intimate knowledge of the resources available in their specific landscape. This place-based wisdom guides our pedagogical approach. Rather than generic sustainability programmes, we help teams develop deep connections to their unique contexts—their children, families, physical spaces, and community resources.
The Bush Kinder children's transformation into nature reserve protectors exemplifies this beautifully. They didn't just learn about environmental protection in the abstract—they developed an intimate relationship with their specific place, becoming attuned to its rhythms, inhabitants, and needs. Their questioning of the workers showed how place-based learning creates not just knowledge, but genuine advocacy and stewardship.
The Dance of Communication
When scout bees return to the hive, they perform an intricate dance that communicates not only the location of nectar but also its quality, distance, and direction. This dance is both precise and poetic, conveying complex information through movement, rhythm, and relationships.
Our documentation and reflection processes mirror this dance. We help teams capture and communicate the subtle yet significant learning that occurs in their sustainability work—from Heritage College ELC's adequate documentation of children's learning during sustainability projects to the stories that emerge around transformative moments, such as discovering a frog in a gumnut.
Creating Ecosystem Resilience
Bees don't just pollinate individual flowers; they strengthen entire ecosystems. Their work creates cascading benefits that support biodiversity, food security, and environmental health far beyond their immediate interactions. Similarly, our approach to sustainability education creates ripple effects that extend well beyond any single learning moment or centre.
When the Bush Kinder children became protectors of their nature reserve, their influence extended beyond their group to shape how adults, including maintenance workers, approached their relationship with that space. When children become capable researchers with nature as their collaborative teacher, when educators develop confidence in facilitating rather than directing, and when families engage as co-educators and knowledge holders, we're building community resilience that can adapt and respond to future challenges.
The Hive Mind: Collective Intelligence in Action
The intelligence of a bee colony emerges not from any individual bee but from its interactions, relationships, and shared purpose. This collective intelligence allows them to solve complex problems, adapt to changing conditions, and create structures of extraordinary beauty and efficiency.
Our work cultivates this same kind of collective intelligence in learning communities. When teams grapple with questions of 'who is responsible for which aspects, including children as agents in the decision-making process,' they're developing the collaborative governance that allows sustainable systems to flourish. When everyone's voice contributes to the whole, we tap into collective wisdom that transforms our practice.
A Living Legacy
Just as bees create honey—a living substance that preserves the essence of countless flowers while providing nourishment for future generations—our sustainability work creates lasting change that continues to nourish and evolve long after our direct partnership ends.
The Bush Kinder children's ongoing protection of their nature reserve shows how transformative moments can create living legacies. Their experience with the frog in the gumnut became honey—a concentrated essence of learning that continues to provide guidance and nourishment for their relationship with the natural world.
The bee reminds us that the most powerful changes happen through relationship, reciprocity, and respect for the wisdom already present in every community. Our logo isn't just a symbol—it's a commitment to working with the same patience, collaboration, and environmental responsiveness that has allowed bees to thrive for millions of years.
In choosing the bee as our emblem, we're declaring our belief that sustainable education, like pollination, is fundamentally about connection—connecting children to place, educators to their deeper purpose, and communities to the collaborative intelligence needed to address our planetary challenges.
Together, we're not just teaching about sustainability; we're cultivating the conditions where it can take root, flourish, and spread naturally, creating learning environments as prosperous and resilient as any thriving ecosystem. The Project Sustainability Collective - Lili-Ann Kriegler and Bronwyn Cron Find out more at:
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