Hands-on education in the rainforest is an important part of our "training centre." We now include elementary school children in our environmental education programme. But in order to take teachers, and especially children, into our forest, it is imperative that we have adequate trails. We need to build trails where children can walk into the different ecosystems without difficulty and in a safe manner, so that they have an overall positive experience.
A significant part of the environmental education programme we wish to develop is to immerse school children into the forest in a safe and controlled manner. However, we cannot do it because there are no trails in our protected forest. Our rainforest has hills, wetlands, rocky areas, dense vegetation, creeks, and other natural conditions that pose a big challenge for kids. We need to build trails that would make educational walks not only easy and entertaining, but also safe.
Our Foundation provides support in the form of training to disadvantaged students and to teachers from rural areas. Most of the students and teachers live close to the forest, yet they barely understand it and rarely, if ever, venture into it. Having access to the forest would allow adults and children to significantly improve their educational advancement and understanding of nature. Your support will contribute to the formation of a new generation of people with an appreciation for nature.
Despite the high reputation of Costa Rica as an environmental haven, the reality is that poaching, use of highly toxic chemicals for food production, and illegal logging, are still common throughout the country. Thus, the importance of environment education to small children and educators is as important as ever. Our foundation addresses these problems by educating people who live in the vicinity of protected forests and national parks about the enormous value and beauty of natural ecosystems.
