Inspired by Jane Goodall, Youth Engagement in Science & Conservation with Patrick van Veen
Patrick van Veen reflects on what made Jane Goodall such an enduring influence on young people—and why her approach to science, conservation and local action still offers a practical model for creating change.
Jane Goodall changed how the world understood chimpanzees. But according to behavioral biologist Patrick van Veen, her influence went far beyond her scientific discoveries.
Van Veen worked with the Jane Goodall Institute for nearly two decades, including five years as Global Chair, and traveled with Goodall, visited conservation projects and saw firsthand how she connected with young people.
In his Earth Talk, van Veen used personal photographs and memories to explore a deceptively simple question: Why was Jane Goodall so successful at inspiring young people?
His answer was not simply her scientific stature. Goodall remained curious, unconventional and willing to challenge accepted ways of doing things. She also connected conservation to people’s everyday lives.
Most importantly, she offered young people something that can be difficult to find amid today’s enormous environmental challenges: a meaningful place to begin.
A Scientist Who Looked Beyond the Data
Goodall arrived in what is now Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania in 1960, at age 26, to observe wild chimpanzees. Her research would transform primatology.
Van Veen emphasized that Goodall’s gift was not simply observation. She understood the significance of what she saw.
Key Takeaways
- Jane Goodall inspired young people by combining scientific curiosity with practical opportunities to act.
- Effective conservation addresses the needs of people, wildlife and ecosystems together.
- Roots & Shoots gives young people freedom to create solutions for their own communities.
- Small, achievable actions can build confidence, skills and lifelong environmental engagement.
- Hope becomes meaningful when people can see a practical way to contribute.
When a chimpanzee used plant material to fish for termites, for example, Goodall recognized that the behavior challenged prevailing ideas about tool use. She also broke convention by giving chimpanzees names rather than treating them only as numbered research subjects.
For van Veen, there is a lesson here for today’s young scientists. Data matter, but science also requires curiosity: noticing what does not fit neatly into the expected categories.
He recalled Goodall’s preference for recording observations on paper, where she could make drawings and side notes about behaviors outside the formal research checklist. Those seemingly small observations could lead somewhere important.
Science, in other words, begins not only with collecting information, but with paying attention.
Conservation Has to Include People
Goodall’s work eventually forced her to look beyond the chimpanzees themselves.
By 1986, she had become increasingly concerned about habitat loss and the pressures facing communities surrounding chimpanzee habitat. She concluded that research alone was not enough and began devoting much more of her life to conservation and advocacy.
That shift led to an approach that van Veen repeatedly emphasized: lasting conservation cannot succeed by treating people and wildlife as competing interests.
Around Gombe, communities need food, income, education, water and places to live. Chimpanzees need forests and connected habitat. Protecting one while ignoring the needs of the other is unlikely to create a lasting solution.
The Jane Goodall Institute’s community-centered conservation work therefore combined environmental restoration with practical support for local communities. Projects included tree nurseries, sustainable livelihoods, education, safe water systems, honey production and community land-use planning.
The underlying principle was straightforward: conservation works better when local people are partners in shaping their own future.
That thinking also helped provide the foundation for Goodall’s work with young people.
Young People Need the Freedom to Make a Difference
Van Veen remembered Goodall as someone who never entirely lost the spirit of a teenager. Even late in life, he said, she remained a little rebellious—willing to question convention and encourage others to choose a different path.
As he put it, Goodall taught young people and adults that “you can make a difference. And that’s your choice.”
Her message was not that individuals must solve the world’s environmental problems. It was that everyone can make a difference.
That philosophy became especially visible through Roots & Shoots, which began in Tanzania in 1991 after a small group of teenagers approached Goodall with concerns about problems in their communities. The program grew around action for three interconnected areas: people, animals and the environment.
Importantly, young people were not handed a rigid global program telling them exactly what to do. They were encouraged to identify problems around them and create their own responses.
A project could mean planting trees, protecting animals or improving a neighborhood. What mattered was engagement—the experience of seeing a problem and discovering that you could do something about it.
“You can make a difference.” Patrick van Veen
That freedom helped Roots & Shoots grow into an international grassroots movement. Van Veen described young people organizing conservation campaigns, supporting tree nurseries, cleaning beaches, helping animals and developing projects within communities and refugee settlements.
The scale of the environmental challenge may be global. The starting point does not have to be.
That sense of agency may be one of Goodall’s most important lessons for environmental education. People are more likely to remain engaged when they can see a connection between their actions and the world around them.
Hope Becomes Powerful When It Turns Into Action
Goodall understood that our everyday choices have consequences far beyond our immediate surroundings. Van Veen noted that the products people buy, the transportation they use and the way they live can affect ecosystems and communities thousands of kilometers away.
But Goodall did not leave young people with that overwhelming global responsibility.
Van Veen recalled that she gave them a different instruction: “Do small things.” Build a bee hotel. Collect litter from the street. Prepare a meal for someone who is alone. Start somewhere close enough that you can act.
This was not a dismissal of large environmental problems. It was a strategy for building participation.
Small actions teach skills, create relationships and give people evidence that change is possible. One local project can inspire another. A young person who plants trees, cleans a beach or helps an animal today may become tomorrow’s scientist, conservationist, community leader or engaged citizen.
“Do small things.” Patrick van Veen, recalling Jane Goodall's message
Goodall’s own life reinforced the same principle. Van Veen remembered her reusing coffee filters, keeping clothes for years and reminding him to put a lid on a pot to save energy. She did not simply tell people how they ought to live; she tried to live according to the values she advocated.
The point is not that a bee hotel or one reused coffee filter will solve climate change or biodiversity loss. The point is that action changes the person taking it—and can begin changing a community around them.
Conservation Needs Hope and Perspective
For van Veen, Goodall’s legacy was ultimately larger than chimpanzee research, conservation programs or even Roots & Shoots.
Near the end of his presentation, he returned to the quality he believed made her so compelling to generations of young people: “She brought hope and perspective to young people.”
That hope was grounded in action rather than wishful thinking.
Goodall saw damaged landscapes, threatened chimpanzee populations, poverty and enormous pressures on natural resources. Yet her response was to look for ways people could participate in solutions.
That meant listening to communities. It meant helping young people develop their own projects. It meant recognizing that protecting wildlife requires attention to human well-being. And it meant continuing to believe that individual choices matter even when no single individual can solve the whole problem.
“She brought hope and perspective to young people.” Patrick van Veen
This may be especially important for today’s young people, who encounter environmental crises through an almost constant stream of news and social media. Information alone does not necessarily create engagement. Without a pathway to action, it can create helplessness instead.
Goodall offered another path: understand the problem, find something within reach and begin.
Hope, in this sense, is not passive optimism. It is the belief that action remains worthwhile—and that people working together can change what happens next.
Practical Takeaways & Implications
Goodall’s approach offers useful lessons not only for conservation organizations, but also for educators, nonprofits, Rotary clubs and anyone trying to engage young people in environmental action.
Start with agency rather than anxiety. Environmental problems are enormous, but people need an achievable first step. Give young people opportunities to identify something they care about and help them act on it.
Connect people, animals and the environment. Conservation is strongest when human needs are part of the solution rather than treated as separate from nature.
Encourage observation and curiosity. Goodall’s scientific legacy reminds us that discoveries can begin with noticing something unexpected.
Make solutions local and practical. A tree nursery, wildlife project, community cleanup or neighborhood initiative may appear small, but these projects build experience and confidence.
Finally, model the behavior you hope to inspire. Goodall’s influence came partly from the consistency between her public message and her daily choices.
Her legacy suggests that the goal of environmental education should not be to convince young people that saving the planet rests on their shoulders. It should help them discover that they have a role to play—and that their contribution, joined with those of others, matters.
About This Earth Talk
Speaker: Patrick van Veen is a behavioral biologist, founder of Ape Management, speaker and author whose work translates insights from biology into practical knowledge for organizations, education and society. He joined the board of the Jane Goodall Institute Netherlands in 2008 and later served for five years as Global Chair of the Jane Goodall Institute. He remains affiliated with the Institute as a senior advisor and advises two chimpanzee sanctuaries in Africa.
Date presented: 27 August 2026
🎥 Watch on YouTube: Link
🎧 Listen as a Podcast: Link
📖 Read the Blog: Link
🌱 Learn more / Project links:
- Jane Goodall Institute
- Roots & Shoots
- Ten Trusts: What We Must Do To Care for the Animals We Love. Available through your favorite bookstore
- Jane Goodall at 90: Celebrating an Astonishing Lifetime of Science, Advocacy, Humanism, Hope and Peace. Available through your favorite bookstore
- Love in Their Hearts: A Celebration of Animal Emotions and Guide to Compassionate Action by Marc Bekoff and Jeff Campbell. Available through your favorite bookstore
- Every Elephant Has a Name, by Jane Goodall and Marc Bekoff, available February 2027 through your favorite bookstore.
