Kids as Forest Guardians in Rural Drake Bay

2023 has been a great year for our environmental education program.  3000 trees have been planted and 2000 more will be planted soon by the end of the year. 42 workshops have been held, reaching 107 children in our environmental education groups and 12 formal lesson were held in 7 different schools.

This program is working on five main areas, Environmental Education, Regenerative Agriculture, Regenerative Livestock, Forest Restoration, and Community Support; all of them focus on Nature solutions for Community development, which is why we changed the name of our project. These five priorities are operated in different rural communities of the Drake district and seek to promote the sustainable development of these communities while promoting actions to restore natural resources while mitigating and adapting to climate change. 

In 2023, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Environmental Education Program of the Corcovado Foundation in Drake Bay. We created five more groups throughout these years. At this point, about five hundred kids have passed throughout our program, and the results have been extraordinary.

In 2023, we have worked in 5 communities: Rancho Quemado, Progreso, Los Angeles, Agujitas, and Los Planes. We worked with the children through workshops, which they attend weekly voluntarily in the afternoons. These kids are learning and developing actions for the environment. The classes usually contain information on the subject, and then games or crafts help reinforce theoretical knowledge while children have fun and build communication, art, and teamwork, among other skills.

During this year, 42 workshops have been held, reaching 107 children. Some of the topics that we studied are what are forests and their types, ecosystem services of forests, types of plants in forests (levels), diversity in forests, problems faced by forests, ways to conserve forests, community awareness about caring for forests and forests as a home for all.

Regenerative Agriculture: we continued collaborating with Drake's families, who learned about regenerative agriculture techniques in 2020-2021.

We are following up on three families who want to implement the Integral Demonstration Farm model. For this, we have been working on the issue of bio inputs, vegetation cover, and composting. This work is possible because of the support of our volunteers.

In addition, with the support of the UNED, we train 47 families of Drake in processing healthy foods. They learned about different food processing techniques and worked on developing innovative recipes with local products that families contributed.

Forest restoration: During 2021, were carried out several rainforest restorations in 3 private farms in Drake (Banegas, Progreso, and La Bijagua). Some areas of the farms were reforested with native species to create connectivity in areas near the forest.  In total, we have planted 241 trees which have been monitored.  

In 2021, we began a restoration of 4.7 hectares of land belonging to a farm in the Golfo Dulce Forest Reserve. By the end of 2023, we will have planted approximately three thousand native trees.

In addition, we are coordinating to support a new project in the Golfo Dulce Forest Reserve, where we want to restore another farm of 17 hectares that are now pasture. At this moment, a first visit was made, and the farm offers excellent potential.