April ushers in both festivals across the state of Georgia as well as Earth Month, a 30-day initiative dedicated to environmental protection. While Earth Day itself is April 22, we’re celebrating throughout the entire 30 days, including a special appearance at Live Thrive Kids Day.

As an Atlanta-based nonprofit working since 2010, Live Thrive strives to create a community that cares about a healthy and sustainable environment. With humble beginnings as a blog, sharing the sustainable efforts of local individuals and communities of various sizes, it has grown to permanent drop-off locations for harmful materials unsafe to leave out on sidewalk curbs, known as CHaRM, as well as environmental education efforts, such as Kids Day.

Kids doing an activity at Live Thrive

Credit: Live Thrive

Located at CHaRM’s DeKalb location in Decatur, Live Thrive Kids Day will take place April 25 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Peggy Whitlow Ratcliffe, Executive Director and Founder of Live Thrive, described the event as “a free, family-friendly event designed to introduce children and families to sustainability through hands-on, engaging activities.” She added that it gives kids the opportunity to learn about environmental responsibility in a fun, approachable way.

That includes the Corporate + Community challenge, an initiative that encourages employees and community members taking part in the program to bring their materials to a CHaRM location to have them recycled, reused or engineered, counting towards their organization’s total participation. The first five years of the initiative resulted in the collection of over 550,000 total pounds of materials from participating companies and in 2026, the expectation is higher than ever. 

child petting a goat at Live Thrive

Credit: Live Thrive

Several of the participating organizations, GPB included, will be attending Kids Day to share recycling activities with families. As for us at GPB, we’ll be promoting our latest multi-platform series, Marked!, with an interactive, sustainability-themed twist to learn more about Georgia's part in the American Revolution (we encourage you to keep your memory skills sharp for this one!). 

Otherwise, Live Thrive Kids Day will feature the winners of the Recycled Runway Contest, focused on designing and building sustainable fashion, and announcing the winners of the Material Collection Contest, challenging participating schools to collect a single type of material for recycling/reuse during a three-week period leading up to Kids Day. 

Woman reads an Earth Day book to kids at Live Thrive

Credit: Live Thrive

And at the end of the day, Ratcliffe hopes that the day of showing that caring for the environment can be fun leads to a lifelong devotion to conservation. “We hope it sparks curiosity in kids and encourages the next generation to take an active role in building a more sustainable Atlanta,” She shared. “We hope kids and families walk away feeling inspired to make small, everyday choices that support sustainability.”

But if you can’t make it to Atlanta to see us at Live Thrive Kids Day, don’t fret: our Education team has a variety of materials focused on teaching students of all ages about sustainability and recycling. From their Live Exploration: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle to shorter videos and activities, there’s something for everyone to enjoy across the state.

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