CAUSE

Preserving the Green & Blue

Being Neighbourly x Jenny Quinton, Ark Eden

Author/ Being Neighbourly
28 March 2025

According to Jenny Quinton, Director of Ark Eden, she didn’t set out to start a charity, but it became obvious that they could support more people and projects if they had charity status.

On Lantau where she lived, she and her friends had been fighting on the front line, “stopping the constant hill fires, stopping a super prison being built, not managing to stop my favourite river being concreted — and on and on,” she trails off.

“A group of friends [including Neil McLaughlin, who inadvertently named Ark Eden] got together and wondered, ‘Can we stop fighting on the frontline for five minutes and instead create a vision of what we want Lantau to be?’” she shares.

At the time, Quinton was a primary school teacher working hard at the English School Foundation network of schools where she set up environmental systems and created environmental curriculum.

When Neil was tragically dying from cancer in 2006, Quinton promised him that his friends would band together to ‘do’ Ark Eden properly. “I didn’t really know what that meant,” she confides, honestly, “but three weeks after he died, I handed in my resignation and started Ark Eden.”

“It was obvious to me that environmental education didn’t really work in the classroom, but when the children went outside, it absolutely did. But, the problem I was coming up against all the time was that there were not enough outdoor providers providing environmental education.”

Quinton worked with organic farms, native tree-planters, green groups, community groups and government departments, and wrote many different programmes. “But it still wasn’t enough and the realisation came to me that I had better become a field trip provider myself; and so I did.”

Almost 20 years on, Ark Eden has bloomed to five full-time staff, including an intern, plus two part-time employees; though this number fluctuates on certain projects, shares Quinton, citing the example that they will have 16 part-timers working on a large school programme in the coming week.

The staff is comprised of qualified school teachers, an event planner, an outdoor education specialist, a restaurant supervisor and a permaculture designer. “Mostly we are makers and builders, very hands on, adaptable, fun-loving, energetic and physically fit,” she says.

Quinton reels off Ark Eden’s four pillar structure to best explain the work they do, which includes: Protecting the wonder & Innocence of children; Nuturing Young Adults; Protecting & Regenerating the Greater Earth Community; and Transformation to a New Era.

Substantiating these pillars, Ark Eden runs around 20 weeks a year of nature holiday camps every Easter, Summer, Half-term, Christmas and Chinese New Year. They also run nature-based school fieldtrip days and school camps; sponsor refugee and underprivileged children; and run Forest School training and Play for Peace, the latter the training of community leaders to become peace makers through teaching them cooperative gaming, compassionate inquiry and non-violent resolution tools.

Quinton’s team also trains high school and university students, as well as local young people to be facilitators on their holiday camps and school programmes. They run day-trips and activity weeks for secondary and tertiary students, and, in addition, corporate programmes and community events.

Meanwhile, as part of the charity’s ‘Protecting and Regenerating the Greater Earth Community’ pillar, Ark Eden has planted over 38,000 native trees of around 160 species and regenerated the Tung Hang Mei Valley in Lantau, with the help of thousands of people from organisations and schools.

“Ark Eden is also a permaculture community and runs a small permaculture farm, teaching people how to grow their own food. We join with other NGO’s to clean beaches, look after buffalo, and so on; and are part of a network of Green Groups advocating for the environment,” says Quinton.

Finally, under the pillar, ‘Transformation to a New Era’, Ark Eden conducts work that helps create an ecological future. “We continue to write envisioning proposals and work to create the future that we want. We run wellness events and work alongside many global organisations,” she shares, adding that every single one of the segments is important. “However, at certain parts of the year some become more prominent. For example, April to June is our tree-planting season.”

“My core message is that we need to protect and regenerate this beautiful planet we live on,” underlines Quinton, adding that we should stop pouring concrete over beautiful nature areas and start valuing Hong Kong for the beautiful, rich biodiverse treasure trove that it is.

“The green and blue are true wealth. In the long term, we will prosper if we preserve our natural heritage. Our city is spectacular because we have big nature. The audience who most needs to hear this is the CEDD [Civil Engineering and Development Department] and so-called Sustainable Lantau Office, proposing artificial islands, and, more recently, a tunnel coming out on Mui Wo beach.”

Quinton continues that her ask for 2025 is that we can better serve our precious planet and each other; and that Ark Eden inspires people to be more and to do more for each other and for nature.

“Come and plant trees, let your children play, get off your devices; and hang out in some beautiful nature spaces!” she exclaims.