Have you ever been up a mountain? Or wandered in a forest? Or a big city? You have to be a bit careful, don’t you, or you can get lost. I find cities scary because there’s so much noise and funny smells. But then I’m used to the sea and lonely icy places way down in the Antarctic. Anyway, to help you find your way around anywhere new, you need a guide. Right? A guide could be one of your parents or a friend who knows the area. Or it could be a map.

Tiki guiding friends  But do you ever feel, as you get older, that life is a bit confusing. Where are you going? School perhaps. Why are you going there? To learn. Learn what? Things. Yes, but why … and so on. In a way, you need a guide again – a sort of map so you can find your own way ahead. You probably have several guides: your older friends, sisters, brothers, parents, teachers. But they may tell you different things and may not tell you what you want to know. This is where I come in!

Tiki the Guide: I’ve worked hard and learned a lot about how you humans – kids and adults – live. And I’ve noticed that most of you are living in a way which makes a Big Mess of our Planet. I think that kids like you are clever enough to do things better in the future. But you probably need a guide to show you where adults have gone badly wrong. So I want to try and be your guide. I want to take you on a few journeys of discovery about some of the things which hurt our planet and life on it, usually because of selfish or thoughtless adult people.

Tiki’s Guides: So I’ve made some guides for you to journey through. You can easily download these and look at them at home or at school. You can even print them and give them to your friends to look at. And, very important, you can talk to me: send me your ideas about how we can work together to make things better for all life – you and your friends as well as me and my penguin and seabird friends. You could even use my stuff to make your own ‘magazine’ about your bit of the planet. If you can use a computer, you can almost certainly do this.

You have power! Hey! I can change the world!You may not think so but you do. Pester power. If you think some adult is doing something wrong, you can tell them. What a mess!You can change things. If it’s your mum, you can talk about whatever it is. If it’s someone in your country’s government or some company, write and tell them and get your friends to as well. Or you could phone or fax or send them an email. But before you do, try and make sure you know what you’re talking about.
Stop watching TV a minute and look what’s happening to the planet!
You can find out lots of basic things from my guides right here. I’ll give you links to other useful places to go if I find them. Or you can use my Search engine.

Power times 2: getting others to wake up. Lots of adults think there’s plenty wrong with the world but don’t think they can make a difference. So they watch TV, shop and pretend that everything’s okay. It’s sort of like being asleep really. You and I know better. If you just talked to two other people about something that you felt was wrong, and they ‘woke up’ and talked to two more each, and so on, how many times would this cycle have to happen before one million people got woken up? I borrowed a calculator and the answer is just – wait for it – twenty times. Now that’s pester power!
Telling others about it
Here’s an example of what you might do. Perhaps you’ve heard a bit about how people are taking loads of stuff out of the Earth – you know, like coal, oil and gas. Then they burn it to make energy to power cars and make electricity and things. This makes smoke and messes up the air we breathe and makes the Planet get warmer. So I’ve written a Guide about Energy which tells you what’s happening and what could happen. If that scares you, then you could find out more about what really worries you most. Or you could start pestering right away. By now, you’ll know more than most adults. And knowing stuff is power! Educating grown-ups
You can talk with other people and persuade them that they should be helping too. You could form a group. You could get interviewed on your local radio (phone them) … and so on. Lots of possibilities here.

Telling me about it: If you get something started in your home, with your friends or at school or something, please tell me about it and I’ll add your stuff to my Friends section. Then others around the world can see what you’ve done too. Send a picture or drawing if you can scan it in.