There doesn’t seem to be anything noteworthy going on at the Toros Social Facility in Konak. However, this spring, more than 200 kids from neighborhoods in Karabağlar, Seferihisar, and Menderes—areas still reeling from last summer’s wildfires that destroyed about 30,000 hectares of İzmir’s surrounding land—gathered for workshops that most school districts, whether American or not, have never considered providing.
In 2026, Türk Henkel’s “Leave a Mark” project arrived in İzmir with a structure that is both unusually thoughtful and deceptively simple. Children aged 8 to 12 participated in a series of workshops that included upcycling and recycling, nature-empathy exercises through drama and storytelling, and practical design projects centered around environmental preservation. Then, as part of a field project named “My Sapling, My Future,” they released homemade seed balls and planted trees. Not for a picture opportunity. as the main idea.
It’s difficult to ignore how different this is from the typical environmental education that the majority of American kids receive, which might include a unit on the water cycle, a recycling poster, or, if funds permit, a field trip. Because environmental awareness is not treated as a subject to be learned and tested, the İzmir program operates differently. It handles it as something to be experienced and then dealt with. Although it is genuinely unclear whether that emotional architecture results in long-lasting behavioral change in 9-year-olds, the design at least takes the question seriously in a way that a worksheet does not.
The consistency of the model is another factor that makes it worthwhile to study. Henkel has previously run “Leave a Mark.” About 250 children who were residing in container settlements after the devastating earthquakes in February 2023 were served by the program in Hatay in 2025. The program was relocated by the company to the area of greatest need, and then it was relocated once more. That isn’t a cycle of marketing. That is more akin to a methodology. The initiative, which was carried out in collaboration with the Turkish needs-mapping organization İhtiyaç Haritası, has established a reputation for responding to disasters and providing something more resilient than relief supplies.
It would be beneficial for American school districts to sit with this larger argument. The actual practice of connecting children to their physical environment, particularly in communities that have witnessed its destruction, tends to slip through the cracks of the intense debate in the United States about what environmental education should look like, who should fund it, and which grade level is appropriate for what content. Since 2022, organizations like UNICEF have been promoting integrated climate education into core curricula, and there is strong evidence to support the idea of beginning early. However, programs that are experiential, community-based, and disaster-responsive are still uncommon.
Henkel, on the other hand, has been in Turkey since 1963 and generates about €20.5 billion in sales annually. Additionally, since 2011, it has been managing the Forscherwelt science education program for kids all over the world. Programs like “Leave a Mark” may benefit the company’s reputation just as much as the kids they serve. It’s reasonable to wonder. However, the program’s structure—expert educators, practical fieldwork, a purposeful emphasis on empathy alongside ecology—gives the impression that it was designed in real time rather than approved in a budget meeting.
American school systems are constantly searching for role models. One is located in İzmir. In a municipal facility close to recently burned land, it entails the planting of seed balls and saplings as well as drama workshops. 200 kids at a time are being reached. That is not insignificant. In fact, that might be the perfect scale to start with.
