Andrea Koehle Jones: Canadian climate journalist, children’s nature education advocate & writer/producer
“I want to give children opportunities to fall in love with nature because you protect what you love.” Andrea Koehle Jones
Andrea Koehle Jones is an award-winning environmental education advocate, climate journalist and the founder of The ChariTree Foundation. This ground-breaking, Vancouver-based, charity connects local and international youth to climate education to help them survive and thrive today and lead a better tomorrow.
Andrea is also a children’s book author, an award-winning documentary producer, photojournalist, videographer, video / photo editor, and a lyricist.
Growing Learning Opportunities for Children and Youth
The ChariTree Foundation connects global youth to climate education through school, camp and community programs. Within the last decade, Andrea has empowered thousands of youth to plant trees across Canada, the United States, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nepal, Mongolia and Tanzania to mitigate climate change while helping them become climate leaders in their communities.
A Canadian Nature Education Trailblazer
Andrea is a United Nations Climate Observer and formerly a journalist with CBC News and Newsworld International and a writer/producer with CBC4KIDS. She is an award-winning documentary producer and has worked as a print journalist/photographer for various daily newspapers and magazines.
She authored and produced The Wish Trees: How Planting Trees Can Help Make the World a Better Place as an educational and humanitarian fundraising tool. 100% of profits go directly to children’s climate education projects. This children’s tree planting book was a project she developed in advance of an assignment to plant trees with children in Africa. Andrea found and hired Venezuelan illustrator Alicia Padrón who later became a New York Times bestseller. After putting The Wish Trees on Amazon to raise money for children’s environmental education projects, this darling children’s tree planting book ended-up being a #1 Amazon Kindle Children’s Forest & Tree Book!
Andrea also worked for The David Suzuki Foundation and Greenpeace. She especially learned lots as a communications specialist for Greenpeace Canada during the campaign to the protect The Great Bear Rainforest, the largest intact temperate rainforest on earth.
Andrea is a recipient of the 2011 Canadian Camping Association’s Award of Excellence for her environmental education programs and her latest screenplay — The Hummingbird Trees (Diary of a Tree Girl) has advanced to:
#1 Family Television screenplay (One-hour) in the past month (Coverfly, August 2023) Semifinalist in the ScreenCraft Film Fund (Fall 2023) Second Rounder in the ScreenCraft Film Fund (Fall 2023) Quarterfinalist, Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards (2023) Quarterfinalist, Big Apple Film Festival Screenplay Competition (2023) Quarterfinalist, Filmmatic Drama Screenplay Awards Season 8 (2023)The Red List (Coverfly 2023)Andrea’s education spans multiple areas critical to being a journalist, writer/producer and leader in climate action:
- Cornell University: Climate Change Leadership Letter of Completion from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences,
- Western University: Masters Degree in Journalism
- Queen’s University: Honours Bachelor of Arts in Geography and International Development
- The Bishop Strachan School: Kindergarten to high school graduation
When she isn’t attending United Nations conferences to advance children’s rights in climate action, Andrea can be found writing children’s books on a tree-topped island off the coast of Vancouver with her family and dogs.
Follow Andrea on Twitter to learn more about her writing journey.
FUN FACT: Andrea is a Canadian songwriter and she wrote the lyrics to the tree song “My Persephone” – a Jango Airplay Top Ten song.
