Education, education, education. During October, November, December 2022, and January 2023 the focus of our Fundacion Bahia activities was on educational beach clean-ups with students and other volunteers in our constant fight against plastic pollution at sea. Reviewing separation at source, the impact of microplastics, intelligent consumer choices, and setting a good example was of paramount importance! Students from the María Auxiliadora educational institution requested advice for the presentation of a marine conservation project for the Pies Descalzos Foundation. Thus, on October 5th we had a mini beach cleanup in el Laguito to identify the waste with the greatest presence in the ecosystem. Students were impressed with the large number of microplastics found on the beach and shore, where many marine birds feed, and witnessed the visible impact of microplastics on marine life. Limpiarte: The last LimpiArte of the year with partners and other NGOs was carried out successfully! Thanks to the 86 volunteers a total of 59.24 kg of solid waste was collected from the beach. We aim to generate awareness in each of the volunteers so that they replicate and commit to environmental conservation. Thanks to all who joined forces on the 15th of October 2022. Our next beach cleanup was on Leaving traces of sustainability in Marbella: This cleanup had the support of 34 volunteers from Recordar who, with their greatest effort and environmental awareness, collected 41 kg of solid waste corresponding to cigarette butts: 0.4 kg; pet 1.54kg; Ordinary 24.58 kg; plastic caps 2.2 kg; metal beer caps 1.45kg; Glass 9.39 Kg; straws and bonbon-bum plastic sticks 1.31 kg!
During November, our big clean-up was in Crespo, a beach we had never before visited! Our educational clean-up was with Surtigas volunteers and their families, the community action board, the environmental committee, and Pacaribe. We collected a total of 43 kg of waste on the beaches. In addition, we held a small workshop with our “Soy Mar - I am Sea” educational booklet for all the children who participated in this activity. In addition, we held a small beach cleanup on the 11th of November to commemorate the Independence of Cartagena, with a group of students and local volunteers in Bocachica! On the 21st of December, our last cleanup of the year was once again in Laguito. To close the year on a high note and reaffirm our commitment to the environment, our clean-up with 45 volunteers from different institutions such as Cojowa, Pacaribe, the environment youth network, and associations of hotels, collected a total of 46.75 kg of residues, mostly from the rocks that protect the beach! Thanks to all who supported our environmental and educational efforts during 2022! We have already begun our work in 2023 focusing on the new group of women eco guides from Punta Arena and looking forward to our many activities here and there!
Links:
Summer of Trees and Seas
June, July, August and September 2022
This summer Fundación Bahía joined the international Trees and Seas Festival in an effort to unite, underscore and touch upon the conservation of forests and seas. We often speak of or focus on only one or the other, but the truth is that we depend on both for our oxygen, our rain and for the health of the planet. The interconnectedness between ecosystems mirrors our own. Although Fundación Bahía´s main focus lies on the ocean, we decided to underline the importance of each and every planetary ecosystem by joining this amazing festival!
Our Trees and Seas celebration started off with the blast of our amazingly beautiful art exhibit, with the help of more than 10 artists in tune with our conservation and education efforts. Many thanks to all the artists that contributed and showed their fantastic work!
A rainy day beach clean up, with volunteers from Cojowa and the Red Nacional de Ambiente, was also a hit! Around 30 volunteers helped recollect a total of 50 kilos of residues.
Fundación Bahía hosted a super fun workshop for all of the students at the Punta Arena Primary School, with a viewing of Ekko. They loved everything they learned, the music from the documentary and the interactive game at the end!
There was also a viewing of Against the Swell in the Historic Museum of Cartagena (MUHCA) in the impressive Palace of the Inquisition!
In honor of the trees, we planted lemon, orange and mango trees in the island of Tierra Bomba, where we also conducted a cleanup that very same day! Volunteers from Prosegur Foundation were especially zealous and helped recollect 100 kilos of residues from the trail and beaches in the community.
Thanks to all the volunteers that came to our activities and contributed towards the sustainability of our communities and city. Thanks to all of you for your donations and continued support!
2022 is proving to be a year of opportunities and surprises! While starting slowly during the first 3 months, in April the energy rocketed to the sky! We celebrated our first ever Plastic Fishing Event with Corona and over 90 local fishermen participated! With a record of 4 tons of plastic from the sea, beaches and mangroves, the effort left us dreaming of winning this never-ending fight against plastic pollution! The event left a major positive impact in the community with the donation of a plastic compacting machine for the local recycling association. p
The basis of it all is the education! Our educational program Clean Seas: Guardians of the Ocean is gaining track with four new schools taking advantage of our workshops and beach clean ups. Volunteers from Cojowa, Montessori, Gimnasio Everest and the public primary school in la Boquilla Sede San Felipe are making strides and becoming guardians of the ocean. Our workshop in la Boquilla the 1st of June was amazing with 23 students per session for 1st, 3rd and 5th grades. Girls and boys from la Boquilla learned to separate residues and of the importance of preserving their beloved ecosystems. Then, they played fun games reinforcing all they had learned! We hope to broaden the scope and work with more public schools in the coming months, so please help us reach more students through your generous donations!
Thanks to the involvement of the Latimpact congress we were able to organize a cleanup and mangrove planting in Punta Arena on April 24th. Many thanks to the 38 volunteers from Latimpact and to the members of the community with whom we planted 50 mangrove trees! The goal was to mitigate the carbon footprint, aid this vulnerable swampland regain equilibrium and fortify conservation efforts and intent within the community in the island of Tierra Bomba.
Another great milestone reached during April was the ESMT team visit, with an amazing group of committed and brilliant students who analyzed in depth and recommended great improvements to the Foundation´s organizational and operative structure. Many thanks for their contributions and energy. We miss having them in our events and activities and hope they will come back soon!
The educational effort to organize a sunset workshop finally took the perfect form. Many thanks to the support from Escuela Taller and their historian Rodrigo Alfaro, who conducted an amazing historical workshop, while we touched upon the environmental importance of our bay. Coming soon our very own hearing aids for these workshops reaching a higher level!
Thank you for your continued support to our project and our work. We hope you will continue supporting efforts to rid the ocean from plastic and to strengthen the education within our communities and city. If you come to Cartagena please join our sunset educational workshop in the bay. We want locals and visitors to learn about the environmental, cultural and historical importance of the bay. To learn about the bay enables us to love it, in order to better care for it! Thank you for reading!
Each new year comes with a renewed purpose and a desire to have a fresh start. This year is no different in our quest for sustainability and in our fight against plastic pollution at sea, but we are indeed starting a new chapter in our work in Punta Arena!
The Fundacion Bahia team feels proud of its achievements in terms of an increased environmental awareness, improvement in residue management and quality of life, not only in Punta Arena but in other parts of the city as well. Thanks to our educational program Guardians of the Ocean (Guardianes del Océano) and our educational booklet Soy Mar (I am Sea) we were able to reach more people and impact the beaches of la Boquilla, Bocagrande and Caño del Oro with our workshops and clean-ups. We will continue to work with these communities in an effort to maintain clean healthy seas, thriving with life!
In Punta Arena during 2021 Fundacion Bahia implemented an environmental action plan to help conservation efforts conducting a total of 33 workshops, training 227 people, leading 9 clean ups with 352 volunteers, with a total of 1,268 kilograms picked up; set up the signs for the ecological trail in an effort to conserve the ¨ciénaga¨; strengthened 7 local associations including local recyclers who in turn were able to recycle 1,250 kgs; visited 200 households to teach how to separate at source and impacted 1,500 people in the community; adding another 2 tons approx. to the previous 247 tons we have stopped from falling into the ocean.
This year our goal is to continue educating volunteers and communities on the importance of preserving our beaches, our ocean and the great mangrove swamps ¨cienagas¨ (inland bodies of water connected to the ocean) around the city and especially in Punta Arena. The revival of local culture and history is important to recover the sense of what really matters and for communities to appropriate the process. We will continue working with local allies, such as the community council, the recyclers association, local restaurants and hotels, other NGOs, but also the Botanical Gardens, Montessori School, Escuela Taller and other partners in order to broaden the information available on the ecological trail in Punta Arena and reach more students, more communities, more in depth.
Our latest bird watching workshop at the eco-trail on Feb. 5 was an amazing experience, thanks not only to the great Professor Restrepo and his amazing students, but also thanks to local leader and passionate former fisherman Delimiro, who shared his experience. We were able to observe 23 different bird species during our walk and to learn how the community used to harvest sea salt from this same place. The exchange of knowledge is vital for the construction of effective environmental and cultural conservation strategies.
Thank you all very much for your continued support to our project and our work. We hope you will continue supporting this great cause of Clean Seas! Please do also come soon to experience one of our clean ups or our Eco Trail in Punta Arena, and make it your own!
On the ongoing fight against plastic pollution in the ocean, Fundación Bahía focused on the community of Punta Arena, in the island of Tierra Bomba. Roughly 1,500 inhabitants benefitted from the positive impacts of increased environmental education, conservation efforts, strengthening of the recycling system and the local recyclers´ association and other local groups and sustainable actions, such as supporting ecotourism activities and artistic interventions. The project´s positive impact on the Punta Arena community has surpassed the expected results due to the community's appropriation of the activities and objectives. We work with local organizations such as: Community Council, Recyclers, Environmental Guard, Environmental Volunteering group, Restaurants, Hotels, the community in general, children and youth, Eco-guides and motorcycle taxi drivers, strengthening environmental education in each one and emphasizing the importance of recovering and conserving the territory through different strategies that each organization and / or person identifies that they can carry out. Sustainable Punta Arena meant a change in the habits of the community, recognizing and valuing its enormous eco-tourism potential, due to the environmental and awareness-raising work that the Bahía Foundation and its allies carry out on the island.
Our educational program Clean Seas: Guardians of the Oceans and its workbook Soy Mar, provided us with the tools with which to strenthen the environmental education in the community. Allies and volunteers also helped us to provide and conduct a total of 33 workshops with a varying range of themes, impacting and helping form about 227 community members.
As part of the conservation efforts to preserve the mangrove and the oceans and beaches, including the bay, Fundacion Bahia organized eight major clean ups, picking up a total of 1,183 kgs. These cleanup brigades were highly educational, setting the tone for adequate separation at source and residue management.
In order to teach separation at source and incentivize recycling the foundation team and a group of local volunteers from the eco guides group visited about 200 houses and local shops. A sticker with the basic guidelines was handed out and a survey conducted on what sustainable practices ought to be pursued.
The artistic intervention, whereas the environmental message is delivered through art was a success, with 4 murals made from recycled plastic caps picked up during cleanups. Children, youth and our team benefitted from the visit of a great artist, Maria Antonia Ruiz, who taught a great technique. Our allies in the island made clean ups and artistic intervention easier and more fun. Locals pitched in and benefitted from 4 recycling stations, 4 murals, 33 workshops, 8 cleanups and tons of residues no longer at risk of falling into the ocean carelessly.
The efforts to support eco-tourism activities as part of the sustainable actions, also proved to be what the community is most attuned to. Punta Arena is famous for its white beaches but now thanks to our ecological trail, the formation given to our eco guides, people can now discover alternative ways to enjoy the island. Bird watching, cycling around the island or simply walking around the town to discover one of the 7 murals currently on open air display are some of the activities the foundation encourages. Conservation pays, and people are seeing how it is better to preserve ecosystems, not only for their own health and well-being, but also as a way to make a decent living. Economic opportunities are the only guarantee to seeing a clean healthy ecosystem, community, island.
Thanks for all your support and please come visit Punta Arena with us!
Links:
Project Reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you will get an e-mail when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports via e-mail without donating.
We'll only email you new reports and updates about this project.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
Make a monthly donation & get 
