This article is a translation from UDN, highlighting DOMI Earth's commitment to climate education for the next generation and its innovative approach to making climate change understandable to three-year-olds.
Is it difficult to teach children about climate change? The answer is no. DOMI Earth co-founder and sustainability officer Tammy sees unlimited potential in children, drawn from her own three kids. For her, climate action is not only for corporations and adults but also for three-year-olds willing to take action. Everyone has the power to change the world.
Climate change affects all humanity, and understanding climate issues cannot wait until one grows up. In 2021 UNESCO called for environmental education to become a core school curriculum by 2025, underscoring the international recognition of rooting climate education from a young age.
Energy conservation and carbon reduction extend from corporations to families
Years ago, Tammy's family fled Beijing's air pollution and returned to their hometown Kaohsiung, only to find the environment dirty, the weather hotter by the day, and motorcycle and car exhaust everywhere. She recalls pushing the stroller with her months-old second child at a traffic light when motorcycles around them suddenly started up: "I quickly picked up my daughter and ran to the other side of the road, leaving the stroller behind." Such discomforts made her realize climate change was happening around her, prompting her to start a company to address it.
DOMI Earth's core philosophy is to help corporations and families take climate action through energy conservation and carbon reduction. Tammy believes that if corporations themselves don't understand sustainability, their employees won't change their thinking and actions at home. Entering its tenth year of helping corporations build sustainability blueprints, she sees firms join the transformation but repeatedly stall on internal conflict from a lack of consensus and culture.
She put it frankly: "If you place five sustainability reports in front of me, cover the company names, and just look at the content, you can't tell which is which. They're all similar — how much was invested in solar panels, water-saving devices, supporting charities. It's clear companies haven't found their niche to exert social and environmental impact." DOMI helps corporations find a sense of mission through the Minus Plus model — eliminating wasted resources and giving back to society on issues like energy poverty, tree planting and children's education.
Picture-book readings and science experiments make energy education fun
Acting as a consultant to corporations on sustainable development, DOMI Earth recently launched workshops specifically for employees' children, leading kids aged 3 to 10 through picture-book readings and science experiments focused on saving energy — learning through play to eliminate the "energy monsters" in daily life. Tammy cites DOMI's unique DOMI Timer as an example, letting children take it apart and reassemble it by hand to understand standby power and how a timer works.
Tammy explains that the reason for targeting such young children is partly that as they grow, exam pressure makes learning purposeful and harder to integrate sustainability naturally; and partly that children genuinely want to protect the Earth and "do big things," with stronger and more direct responses. At parent-child beach and mountain cleanups, she has watched children "pick up trash and scold at the same time, wondering who threw these things here."
The children's unfiltered reactions and instinct to defend the Earth give Tammy great satisfaction in promoting climate education — making her exclaim that "teaching adults about energy conservation and carbon reduction is really too difficult!"
Have you heard of anyone taking supplementary classes in environmental education?
Perhaps even more challenging is convincing parents to support climate education. Although the government has begun introducing environmental and climate education into schools, the emphasis on academic advancement and fragmented planning remain issues. "From a young age, everyone goes to tutoring for English, math and science — but have you ever heard of anyone going for environmental education? Its importance is on par with other subjects, and the concept must be established from a young age," Tammy says. This is why DOMI continues a B2B model: convincing corporations to pay so employees can bring their children to courses, starting change with the children of corporate employees.
But do such young children really understand energy conservation? Tammy recalls that when her daughter was 3 or 4, they entered a restaurant and the girl immediately pointed at the lights and said, "Mom, these aren't LED lights!" At corporate tree-planting events the children grow curious about who will care for the trees afterward. In sensitivity to sustainability, children are in no way inferior to adults. As a busy entrepreneur, Tammy admits she never deliberately taught her three children about climate change — they absorbed the concepts through everyday adult conversation, which gradually internalized into their own values.
Advocating Power to Change, the daily practice remains fraught with difficulties
This family education builds good concepts for the children but also brings shocks. Tammy's eldest daughter joined a school camping event where the teacher asked everyone to bring reusable utensils; yet at the barbecue, classmates still flocked to the teacher for disposable plates and cutlery. When the daughter gently reminded them they could use their own, a classmate retorted, "Are you going to wash the dishes for us?" Classmates even threw a whole bag of unfinished vegetables and bread into the trash; she rushed to salvage it but only saved a piece of bread.
Her daughter couldn't understand why the teacher, who was present, didn't intervene. She came home disappointed: "You said we all have the power to change, but I can't even convince everyone to use eco-friendly utensils — what more can I change in the world?" Tammy patiently brainstormed with her, imagining what solutions she might propose if she were the teacher. Tammy notes that too many things in the social system conflict with the values children hold at home, which convinced her that simply sitting in a classroom hearing a teacher explain carbon dioxide is not enough — climate education must start from everyday life.
From indifference to caring: seeing carbon-reduction opportunities everywhere
Compared with dry knowledge, Tammy believes cultivating leadership and communication skills matters more. "There are many consultants who can help with carbon-reduction and energy-saving technologies, but what's important is to understand the significance of things through dialogue and experience — that's when thoughts will change."
Education requires long-term cultivation, and Tammy emphasizes she will keep developing new courses and workshops under the AGC Transition Institute framework. Whatever the format, the core philosophy is to lead adults and children from not caring or not knowing where to start, to caring about the environment and seeing life filled with carbon-reduction opportunities. In the face of irreversible climate change, corporations and families must bring change to daily work and life with the right mindset and leadership — only by changing one's mindset and taking action can one influence those around them.
Frequently asked questions
- Can children really understand energy saving and carbon reduction?
- Yes. DOMI Earth runs workshops for children aged 3 to 10 using picture books and hands-on science experiments — for example letting kids disassemble the DOMI Timer to learn about standby power. Founder Tammy Hu finds children are no less sensitive to sustainability than adults.
- Why does DOMI focus climate education on very young children?
- As children grow, exam pressure makes learning purposeful and harder to integrate sustainability naturally. Young children genuinely want to protect the Earth and respond more directly, so rooting the concepts early — through everyday life rather than lectures — is more effective.
- How does DOMI's children's education connect to its corporate work?
- DOMI keeps a B2B model: it convinces corporations to fund the courses so employees can bring their children. The logic is that if companies and parents internalize sustainability, change carries home — reinforced by DOMI's Minus Plus model that turns wasted corporate resources into social impact.
- What does Tammy Hu see as the real goal of climate education?
- Beyond technical carbon-reduction knowledge, she prioritizes leadership and communication skills — leading adults and children from indifference to caring about the environment and spotting carbon-reduction opportunities in everyday life, then acting on them.