Eshadi Mendis

My work is expanding who gets to explore, study, and protect nature in Sri Lanka. Through Schoolyard Scientists, the initiative I founded, I transform schoolyards into living learning spaces. Across seven provinces in Sri Lanka, children and teachers have documented more than 550 species, one of the largest child-led biodiversity datasets in the country. In the central hills, students now participate directly in ecological research on endemic lizards with our team. This shift from memorising facts to generating real scientific knowledge has changed how both children and teachers see themselves: not as passive learners, but as contributors to conservation. 

Beyond the schoolyard, my work has strengthened youth leadership in global biodiversity policy. I have trained over 1,200 young people to participate meaningfully in national and international decision-making processes through the Global Youth Biodiversity Network. This ensures that the next generation has a seat and a voice at the tables where their future is being negotiated.

To scale this impact, I am developing a research-backed framework to help schools embed curiosity-driven, nature-connected learning in sustainable ways, even in resource-constrained environments. This framework will provide educators with practical tools to move beyond traditional instruction and support children in forming lifelong relationships with the living world.

My hope is for an education system that sees nature not as a chapter to memorize but as a teacher that shapes character, empathy, and leadership. If children can rediscover wonder in the places they already live, they can also rediscover their agency to care for those places and influence the policies that determine their future.

In Sri Lanka, exploration is often imagined as something distant, expert-driven, and resource-intensive. My work challenges that assumption by transforming everyday learning spaces into living laboratories where children investigate species, map microhabitats, and generate ecological insights from places previously considered ordinary.

In a system where most learning happens indoors, even about nature, many children are encountering the living world up close for the first time. Through Schoolyard Scientists, stepping outside with curiosity becomes a meaningful act of discovery as students observe organisms, follow ecological clues, and learn directly from the environments they inhabit.

Many schoolyards we work in have never been biologically documented. Children have uncovered unexpected, endangered, and endemic species hiding in drains, fence lines, and abandoned corners, making small but significant discoveries that reshape how communities view familiar surroundings. With teachers guiding inquiry, these spaces evolve into accessible field sites where scientific thinking is practiced on a daily basis.

This approach redefines exploration to be democratic and locally grounded. It expands who is recognized as an explorer, what counts as a frontier, and how new ecological knowledge emerges. My work is rooted in a belief I learned early in life: even the smallest, most familiar places hold stories waiting to be discovered.

In this view, exploration is not defined by distance but by attention. It becomes a mindset that encourages children to look closely, investigate thoughtfully, and build relationships with the natural world around them, turning everyday places into frontiers and everyday children into explorers.