Childhood belongs outdoors

"We are all doing the same thing in different languages, and none of us know what the others have learned."

— Dušan Bartůněk, Czech Republic, 2023

The International Association of Forest Kindergartens began with a recognition that arrived in the same form in every country: here was a movement that worked — and yet its practitioners were largely invisible to one another.

Forest kindergartens have existed for over a century. The German Waldkindergarten. The Scandinavian friluftsliv tradition. The British forest school movement. Japan's rich network of nature-immersive preschools. Each has developed its own pedagogy, its own standards, its own community of dedicated practitioners. Each is strong in its own place.

But an educator building a nature preschool in Costa Rica had no easy way to find her counterpart in New Zealand who had solved the same problem five years earlier. A researcher in South Korea studying outdoor learning outcomes had no global dataset to work with. A parent in São Paulo searching for a forest kindergarten had no single place to look — or even a clear sense of what to look for.

This is the gap we kept running into. Not a lack of good work. A lack of connection.

IAFK was founded in Slovenia — a country where forests cover 60% of the land and outdoor childhood is woven into cultural life — by three people who had spent their careers in and around forest education: Uroš Jelen, Dušan Bartůněk, and Elizabeth Henderson. Their founding question was not does this work. The research on that is clear. Their question was: why is the movement still so fragmented — and what would it take to change that?

The answer was IAFK. And the first thing they discovered, once they began sharing the idea, was that the movement had been waiting for exactly this.

What we do

We are building the first global map of forest kindergartens — a living directory that makes the movement visible to itself, to families, and to the policymakers who need to see its scale. When you join IAFK, you join a network of organisations and practitioners across dozens of countries who share your conviction that children learn best when they are outside.

Connect

We are developing a shared quality framework — not a global certification imposed from above, but a set of minimum principles developed with practitioners, that allow standards to be recognised across borders. A forest school educator in the UK should be able to practise in Germany. A programme in Canada should be able to demonstrate its quality to funders in Japan. We are building that bridge.

The research on nature-based early childhood education is growing fast — and it is scattered across journals, institutions, and languages. IAFK curates and translates that evidence into resources that practitioners can actually use: evidence briefs, practitioner guides, policy summaries, and a growing online library of the world's best thinking on outdoor childhood education.

Forest kindergartens are still not formally recognised as a valid early childhood education model in most of the world. Operating one often means fighting regulatory frameworks designed for indoor classrooms, justifying your practice to local authorities, and doing it without the backing of any international standard or body. IAFK is the voice that changes that — an evidence-grounded, internationally recognised federation that can walk into a ministry of education and make the case for childhood outdoors.

Strengthen

Learn

Advocate

These are not aspirational phrases. They are the principles that guide how we make decisions, how we treat our members, and how we speak about our work.

Rooted in practice
Our credibility comes from the forest floor, not the conference room. We listen to practitioners first. Every standard, framework, and resource we develop is tested against the reality of what it means to run a forest kindergarten — in all weathers, in all cultures, with real children.

Open and inclusive
Forest kindergartens go by many names — forest school, nature preschool, Waldkindergarten, udeskole, friluftsliv, outdoor nursery. The form varies by culture, climate, and context. We welcome the full diversity of this movement. Our shared ground is the conviction that children belong outdoors.

Evidence-informed
We hold ourselves to the same standard we ask of practitioners: show your reasoning, cite your sources, acknowledge what you don't know. We support research, commission it where gaps exist, and never make claims we cannot substantiate.

Collaborative, not controlling
IAFK is a federation of equals. We exist to support, amplify, and connect the organisations and practitioners who are already doing excellent work — not to regulate, rank, or centralise. National associations remain sovereign in their own contexts. We provide the global layer that makes local strength more visible.

Built for the long term
The children in today's forest kindergartens will be the first generation shaped by a globally connected movement. We build for them — with patience, rigour, and an enduring belief that what we are doing matters.

Our Values

Who we are

Dušan Bartůněk, Czech Republic

Dušan has run forest kindergartens in Central Europe for decades and has been a leading voice for nature-based education standards in the Czech Republic. His observation — we are all doing the same thing in different languages, and none of us know what the others have learned — became the founding problem IAFK was built to solve. He leads our quality frameworks and practitioner development work.

Elizabeth Henderson, United Kingdom

Elizabeth's work spans forest education research, curriculum development, and international practice across the UK and beyond. She identified the dimension that gave IAFK its policy ambition: the evidence base is growing, but it's scattered — we can't advocate for change with scattered evidence. She leads IAFK's research, knowledge exchange, and advocacy programmes.

Uroš Jelen, Slovenia

Uroš has spent his career at the intersection of outdoor education, environmental policy, and early childhood practice in Slovenia — a country where forests have always been central to how children grow. He asked the founding question that became IAFK: what if we built the thing that should already exist?

We launched a website in March 2026 with team of three determination to build the infrastructure the global forest kindergarten movement deserves.

In April 2026, we are assembling our founding coalition — the organisations from across the world who will shape IAFK's governance, standards, and direction in its first years. We are building the Global Directory. We are developing the Quality Principles Framework. We are planning the first IAFK Annual Summit.

By 2029, we aim to have active members on every inhabited continent, a global directory of more than 5,000 forest kindergartens, and a recognised voice in international early childhood education policy.

We are early. The work is real and ongoing. And we are building it with the practitioners who know, from daily experience, exactly what is at stake.

Where we are heading

Join the movement

The forest has always been generous with what it gives to children.

We are trying to build something worthy of that.

If you run a forest kindergarten, we want you on the map.
If you lead a national association, we want you at the table.
If you are a researcher, we want your work in the conversation.
If you are a parent who believes in this — tell another parent.