Sustainability for the Children: Enviornmental Education with F2F in the Dominican Republic

By -

 

Fondo Agua Yaque del Norte (Fondo Agua) and APEDI are two prominent environmental conservation organizations in the Dominican Republic. Fondo Agua uses financial mechanisms to raise capital managed as a trust to fund environmental conservation and recovery in the Yaque del Norte river basin. APEDI is a leading Dominican non-profit that promotes economic and social development in the country. The two organizations have formed a partnership to promote sustainable development outcomes in the country.

 

Noticing the lack of formal environmental education, the organizations decided to create an environmental education manual focused on natural resource management for universities, schools, and other educational programs. To accelerate the creation process, the organizations requested the support of Farmer-to-Farmer volunteers to guide the organizations’ staff on topics and content for the manual.

Due to travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, F2F DR recruited a local and a remote volunteer team to assist in creating the manual. The remote volunteer, Peter Philips, is a retired professor of marine and aquatic resources with significant expertise in teaching natural resource management in English and Spanish. The local volunteer, Rashel Santana, is a publication and writing specialist in the Dominican Republic who helped tailor Dr. Philip’s content to the country’s environmental and educational context.

The assignment started with virtual meetings between the two volunteers and organization staff to listen and respond to hosts and volunteers’ questions, review the itinerary, contextualize the problem for Peter, and establish the next steps. After, Rashel began in-person meetings with the organizations’ staff to outline the manual, work through content details, and gather questions to bring to Peter. After months of collaboration between Rashel, Peter, APEDI, and Fondo Agua, the organizations now have a comprehensive manual to guide environmental and natural resource-based education in the Dominican Republic. The manual has a series of modules for each topic, and it may be taught in-person or remotely.

 

With this manual, the country has a powerful and comprehensive tool that can be disseminated throughout the Dominican Republic’s educational and civil society organizations. After the assignment, F2F DR and the participating organizations hosted an online launch party to celebrate the finalization and deployment of the manual. F2F DR anticipates further collaboration with these organizations to implement and update the manual moving forward.

This assignment contributed to the broader goals and objectives of the Rural Adaptation and Resilience by creating educational tools to enhance natural resource management in the Dominican Republic.

 

 

 

  Rashel, Peter, F2F Field Officer Rafael Marte, and the director of APEDI discussing the manual virtually


Comments

  1. World ScouterFriday, May 20, 2022

    Thanks you for sharing this unique useful information content with us. Really awesome work. keep on blogging
    Hire GraphQL Developer India

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Better Marketing and Communications to Showcase the Work of our Hosts in Colombia

By -
Image
Salva Terra Foundation has focused on supporting vulnerable communities through sustainable agriculture. They work with impoverished populations and victims of violence in Medellin and aim to promote farming and develop local skills to work in the agricultural industry in an ecological manner. This process of bringing together concepts such as social impact, sustainable development, environmental protection, and food security requires excellent outreach and promotion. Therefore, they requested a F2F volunteer to help them develop a communication and marketing plan. The chosen volunteer for this assignment was Dr. Sindy Chapa. She has a B.A. in Mass Media Communications, with a Minor in Television and Art Design, an MBA, and Ph.D. in International Business/Marketing. She is the Director and Associate Professor at the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University and has won several communications awards. Dr. Chapa decided to use Salva Terra as one of the case
Read more

My First Goat: A Professor, Students, and some Goats Tackle Food Insecurity in Rural Guatemala

By -
Image
Two Worlds Come Together to Build New Solutions against Malnutrition What does a USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) expert volunteer group from the island of Puerto Rico have to do with combatting food insecurity in Guatemala? Everything.  F2F volunteer Gabriela Colón Rios trains Mam Indigenous women to better care for their goats which will improve food security and reduce high malnourishment rates. Chiantla, Guatemala. Photo Credit: Monica Gonzalez In March 2023, a group of five eager F2F volunteers arrived in Huehuetenango (Huehue), Guatemala, with hearts and minds set on combatting food insecurity in a part of the world unknown to them.  Over the next 10 days, this team of experts would consider Huehue, in Guatemala’s Western Highland region, their new home and office. Accompanying them on their mission would be faithful companions and mighty conduits of change: goats.  Communities in this region live at altitudes reaching 10,000 feet above sea level nestled by captivating mountai
Read more

Digital Marketing in Colombia

By -
Image
Digital Marketing is one way that entrepreneurs and producers across the globe can reach new markets and increase sales. But what is digital marketing and how can a small Colombian business use it to maximize the number of people who come across its brand? These are the questions that Zen Naturals was asking itself. Zen Naturals is a natural cosmetic manufacturing company based in Cali, Colombia. Zen Naturals develops natural cosmetics made from exotic ingredients from Colombia’s outstanding biodiversity. Through ethical manufacturing and fair trade practices, they are also taking a leadership role in re-investing in the communities that grow the ingredients used in their products. Currently, Zen Naturals supports more than 95 Colombian quinoa farming communities through Fair-Trade Practices and technical assistance on their production. Zen Naturals is preparing to launch their quinoa facial care products in Whole Foods Markets in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. in 2017.
Read more