Alerick Pacay
Other projects
26 Nov 2015
Environmental Education Program for Children, With Focus on Management and Sustainable Use of the Marine and Coastal Resources of the Guatemalan Caribbean
23 Jan 2017
Environmental Educational Program for Teachers at the Guatemalan Caribbean as a Key for Conservation in Rural Areas
This project is the last step of an environmental education program where teachers and students of six communities of the protected area “Punta de Manabique”, will learn to design and implement a community service campaign lead by themselves.
Pollution and deforestation are the main threats for nature at the region. For this reason, the project will encourage lead-by-locals-campaigns for single-use plastic reduction and reforestation at 6 coastal communities to increase people’s awareness and take actions towards nature.
6 classroom-like-conservation-centres will be built with eco-bricks made of the trash that is in the communities. They will be monuments to teach people about plastic impacts and also as a place where locals can meet and create their conservation campaigns. Furthermore, environmental workshops and training will be given to teachers and students, so that they can learn the processes and continue with these campaigns even when the project is finished.
Tree planting.
This project is the third and the last step of the educational work I have been doing at the Guatemalan coastal communities. The last two years, I have conducted several environmental workshops for students and teachers with the financial support of the Rufford Foundation. In 2016, conservation of marine and coastal ecosystems was taught to children of public schools with Mundo Azul (a NGO I used to work for). During 2017, a program to train educators as replicators of change, was held with different teachers from public schools at the rural area.
During this projects, environmental education workshops were held for different audiences, aiming at creating behaviour changes and increasing positive perceptions towards nature. After empowering our participants, they all have come to the conclusion that there are two main issues threatening the region: pollution and deforestation.
This project aims at creating six classroom-like-conservation-centres made of eco-bricks, where villagers can plan lead-by-locals-campaigns for single-use plastic reduction and reforestations at six coastal communities of the protected area Punta de Manabique, to increase people’s awareness and take actions towards nature.
Environmental workshops and training will be given to teachers and students, so that they can learn the processes and continue with these campaigns even when the project is finished. Talks will include topics like marine debris and how to reduce it, creation of Eco-bricks, description of native tree species, methods to prepare seeds before planting, community mapping, campaign planning, etc.
Educators of the previous project will be actively participating in this project, being leaders and helping students to plan their campaigns to tackle environmental threats. Three communities will do a campaign against plastic, while the other three will do reforestation campaigns and how to preserve local forests and wildlife. Conservation campaigns have the goal to create 24,000 ecobricks, to reduce 30% of the plastic emissions, to plant 6000 native trees, and to get 150 people involved in the project.