IANEC Is Officially Registered as an NGO

Right now, somewhere in the world, a teacher is zipping a three-year-old into a rain jacket and heading for the trees. It might be Maribor, Osaka or Cape Town. That teacher knows what the forest gives children. What they have rarely had is a shared place to stand with everyone else who knows it too.

Now, we can say it plainly: The International Association for Nature-based Early Childhood (IANEC) is officially registered as a non-governmental organization, with its seat in Maribor, Slovenia. 

From a question in Berlin to a legal entity

It started with a question. At the international forest kindergartens congress in Berlin, I asked colleagues whether the world needed an international association. Many said yes, and many quietly added that the work felt too large for any one of them to take on.

So we decided to take it on together.

On 20 June, our founders met online from across the world. It was 14:00 in Maribor, 08:00 in New York and 21:00 in Tokyo, and we agreed on why IANEC should exist. On 11 July, our Founding Assembly adopted the Statute and elected our first officers. Then came handwritten signatures travelling by post, paperwork, and patience.

Now it is done. The circle that began as an idea has a legal form.

What registration changes

Registration gives IANEC legal personality. We can now open an account, sign agreements and act formally in our own name.

In practice, it opens the door to partnerships with national associations, shared projects, funding opportunities and a stronger global voice for nature-based early childhood education. It turns our good intentions into something that can last longer than any one of us.

What does not change

IANEC works alongside national associations, never above them. We exist to connect and amplify, not to regulate or replace.

Every country has its own roots in this work: the German Waldkindergarten, the Scandinavian friluftsliv tradition, the British forest school movement, the nature-immersive preschools of Japan. IANEC is here to help what each of you has learned travel further than any one place could carry it.

What comes next

We are opening our doors. If you lead a national association, a network, a forest kindergarten or a nature-based programme anywhere in the world, we would love to know you and to explore how we can work together.

Visit our global-map and tell us where in the world you are building this work.

And one question for you to carry into your next morning outdoors: what is the first thing you would want a global community of forest kindergartens to do for you?

We are listening.