Youth Active Citizenship Course - What Can I Do for my Island San Cristóbal?

“What is a good example of active citizenship that benefits people and animals?” Adrian Rodriguez, youth leader, asked the group of 20 local teen-agers. The responses were creative and novel: promote water bottle refills from local water jugs instead of plastic bottles and plant vegetable gardens beside peoples´ homes, among others. When asked to think of actions each of us can take, we were in agreement to use aluminum water bottles, use cloth bags and less plastic, use resources more intelligently and come by foot or on bicycle to the course.

The actions we can take to care for our community and planet are many- the challenge is focusing on which actions are most beneficial and will catch on quicker among our peers. After 8 days of the youth course, 5 youth leaders and myself have  met every morning over the last two weeks to analyze this question and plan to work with more than 100 children (ages 8 to 13) in the summer vacation courses sponsored by the Galapagos National Park Directorate and the Casa de la Cultura (Cultural House). Over this period our number has grown to 12 teen-agers, and they have named the group ALIVE: which stands for in Spanish Adolescentes Líderes con Intención de Vida Ecológica and in English Young Leaders Intent on Living Ecologically.

Below are some photos showing the fun we have had and the actions we have learned. I hope to have a preliminary report analyzing the results of the course for the youth and younger participants by the end of this month.

Youth Leadership and Service Learning on San Cristóbal

Youth Leadership and Volunteer Course - February 13 to 22, 2013 with options to volunteer with local institutions in their day camps March through April: 

A Service-Learning Opportunity with a focus on Active Citizenship and Conservation

Building on my experiences as counselor and division director in US summer camps and team leader for the Youth Volunteer Corps, I am coordinating a youth leadership and volunteer course for teen-agers 14 through 19 years old to promote active citizenship and conservation through everyday actions. We are currently designing the activities for the week and would love ideas of fun, educational self-esteem and team-building activities that you have participated in or led. Please comment with your ideas.

PS- As one of my new year´s resolutions in 2013, I plan to post weekly to this blog to keep my friends and family better updated in the US on the progress of my community education and outreach project. Please cross your fingers for me! :)

Facing Human Capital and Productivity Challenges in Education

September 1^st, 2012: Facing Productivity and Quality Challenges in Galapagos Education

After serving as a teacher in a K-12 school since April of this year, I am impressed by the positive aspects of the educational system and concerned with the productivity and quality challenges. While students tend to enjoy group projects and organize fun events, I have found that, in general, they lack personal commitment to learning and concentration in their subjects. In addition, teachers and administrators disagree over schedule and resource issues, and, at least in my case, spend more time on bureaucratic processes and trying to evaluate students fairly more than lesson plan development and ensuring learning of the key knowledge and competencies.  

Focusing on the disagreements between adults, the negative energy interchanged between these actors in the system impacts everyone, often more than we appreciate. For reasons I am still exploring (one of which is unequivocally low self-esteem), many people in the community tend to perceive things around them negatively and look to blame someone else, playing the victim role and unwilling to address issues for self-improvement. For me as a professional, it is not this negative energy that is the most concerning because I had already developed mechanisms to overcome it. Rather, I am concerned by and trying to adapt to the commonly accepted norms of low productivity and complacency towards identifying and engaging in the challenging work necessary to advance towards one’s personal goals.

In Washington, DC due to the high expectations and resulting stress, I often experienced negativity in the workplace, sometimes as the receiver, other times as the transmitter. However, given my strong belief in the power of positive energy and shared devotion to work hard, my peers and I were able to help one another rise above the negative energy and work more productively in a healthier environment. I really enjoyed the team spirit at Chemonics and definitely miss it in my daily life here; not to say it doesn’t exist, but it is less common and constant. J

While I am thankful to my three peers at the school for their dedicated work ethic and open communication, as well as other hard-working colleagues that contribute to an atmosphere of quality education, I am still trying to identify the roots to the negative forces that demote productivity so that we can try to redirect the energy positively to promote productivity. So far, I have identified two roots to the problem and possible solutions:

1.      We focus too much on results and not enough on the process. Most all students and parents want to receive a score of 20/20 points consistently without sufficient focus on ensuring a quality learning process and demonstrated mastery of the learning objectives. Often, these students do not pay attention in class, copy from their classmates, do attend class regularly, and do not demonstrate mastery of the learning objectives. Nevertheless, they still have this unwarranted expectation that they should receive a perfect score to maintain their image as “good students”, even though they are not performing at the standards of “good students” as identified in other parts of the world: good time management, concentration, knowledge acquisition, high performance and other valuable skills. A suggested solution here would be to democratically redefine “good student” and what “20/20” means, share this new definition and then, the most challenging part: hold teachers and students accountable to this new definition!

2.      We don’t value the importance of holding others accountable enough. As a social norm in this small community of around 8,000 people, excuses are accepted and pardons given regularly without firm limits and respect for holding someone responsible when he or she does not meet his or her obligation. Many times, the teacher will assign homework due the next day and receive only a few responses. The majority of students who have not complied will come up with various excuses, with some turning in the work up to a month late. Similarly, a student will not pay attention in class and take notes when instructed, then will ask a classmate for his or her notebook to copy. In either case, if the teacher or student does not accept the late work or comply with the request to copy, then he or she is seen as un-loyal and mean. As many of us know, holding people accountable is an important social measure to help them be more responsible and grow as a human being. Thus, the obvious suggested solution would be to develop rules of conduct that promote holding one another accountable, being productive and not allowing one to evade responsibility and project guilt onto others. 

3.  We don’t plan enough in advance to give sufficient time to implement, including collection of adequate resources, for projects. As in many social settings, and likely in many schools, projects are part of the learning process but many times occur outside of curricular planning. The result is reduced official curricular learning time and increased project preparation time. This, of course, can be a positive learning process, but the concern is that many times it happens last minute, subsumes the planned learning process, and discourages students if haphazard and not planned well (which, in my opinion, is more often than not). A recent example is my high school’s preparation for today’s Independence Day parade. Yesterday, classes were cancelled all morning (6 hours) so they could march up and down the street and through the schools’ courtyards to perfect their performance. The students were all very frustrated and exhausted, not to mention, as I noticed in an afternoon meeting with the student council, they were all sunburnt! What was the objective of this? To show that our students can march well and the band could play a wartime piece for the parade. While they likely reached this social goal, I don’t think the benefit outweighed the cost of exhausting the students and stripping them of any pure voluntary desire to participate. A suggested solution is much more advanced planning in line with classes and teachers’ curricular planning to better match these two types of learning activities (traditional classroom and extracurricular during school hours) and better guarantee student engagement and interest in the process and outcomes.

What is the conclusion of this lengthy and delayed blog entry? Life on the island is a challenge in many ways. Of course it is beautiful, peaceful and relatively safe, but every week I am learning reasons that discourage productive and positive people from staying. I resolve to persevere and stay to make a positive impact, even if it is only in a small way. In addition to sharing these ideas with my colleagues, I also want to explore the opportunity to do a post-master’s degree in program development and project management for sustainable behavior change to try to develop a solid toolkit of mechanisms and processes that can be implemented by various institutions to work towards the vision of the “good life” in the islands that balances human development with conservation.

Thanks for reading, and I welcome your thoughts!

What is the Balanced, Exemplary Steps for Sustainability in San Cristobal?

What is the Balanced Exemplary Steps Project (Proyecto Pasos Equilibrados Ejemplares)?

This is an initiative begun by the author, Ashleigh D. Klingman de Sarigu, Galapagos resident through marriage, and continued through collaboration with local institutions and foundations through a seed grant from the Galapagos Conservancy. The project design has evolved since April 2012 in line with local needs and desires. In general, we (myself and local contributors) seek to organize activities and programs that promote shared actions towards a more harmonious coexistence with others and nature on the islands. The project name means:

·         Steps (Pasos) = concrete actions with a social commitment towards positive change, evolved beyond ideas and words

·         Balanced (Equilibrados) = as a responsible citizen, I seek to balance human needs with those of the environment, my daily actions with my values

·         Exemplary (Ejemplares) = rather than suggest what others need to do to change, I seek to be the change. We seek to exemplify Ghandi’s wise words: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

What are the key disciplines?

Community education and outreach, conservation, sustainable development, citizen science, (socio-ecological) leadership, public affairs, volunteerism

Where do we work?

The project works on the island of San Cristobal, population roughly 6,500 people, in the province of Galapagos, Ecuador.

With whom do we work?

The team is currently composed of myself: Ashleigh Klingman, Masters in Public Affairs and Latin American Studies with a focus on Education for Sustainable Development, as a member of the Governing Counsel planning department, and two local high school students: Adrian Rodriguez and Mariuxi Torres (part-time assistance). We are currently drafting a cooperative agreement to work with a local foundation based on Santa Cruz Island: Un Cambio por la Vida (A Change for Life) that promotes active citizenship and small community development projects.

We work directly with local youth and educators through the Youth Council for Social Services, the School District, Student Governments, Ecology Clubs, and the local Cultural Chapter (Casa de la Cultura) among others. In 2012, we had 60 direct beneficiaries and hope to increase that number to 100 in 2013.

What activities do we do?

In 2012, I coordinated meetings and activities with the groups mentioned above promoting beautification projects in schools and a campaign to reduce the use of plastics and trash in the ocean. In September, I joined the Governing Council’s planning team to help structure the regional plan in terms of education, health and culture.

In 2013, we are working to build spaces for citizen science around current public affairs related to conservation and coexistence including animals’ rights and reduction of waste generation.

One step in building these spaces is to strengthen local youth groups. A key activity is the Youth Leadership and Service Learning Course this vacation period (February through April) that will help prepare student leaders to better facilitate democratic learning activities and promote volunteerism. This activity has been designed to support the annual vacation day camps to collaboratively facilitate the sharing and implementation of alternative teaching methods and promote volunteerism among local institutions, youth, children and their families.

A second step in building these spaces is creating and sharing tools to communicate successes. We will develop a compendium of practical socio-environmental activities for students and teachers and promote online sharing through social media like Facebook and blog spot.

What is the long term vision of this project?

The long term goal is for the Governing Council planning department to absorb the project and its philosophy into daily planning processes, promoting citizen science and community education and outreach around current public affairs that offer platforms to analyze conservation and human development in the islands. Through this incorporation, the project activities will also indirectly encourage education reform towards a more democratic, innovative and experiential model by offering alternative spaces and methods of interaction in the community. 

Photos and Reflections from the Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic Endeavor Cruise, March 30 - April 7, 2012

Commemorating 30 years of life and 5 years of marriage for Geovanny and me

Before taking my first ever cruise of the islands I had many doubts. Before I had criticized this luxury tourism of the islands because most local people and Ecuadorians are prohibited from participating due to high prices (average is $5,000 a person for 7 days which includes visits, food, lodging, etc. but doesn’t include airfare and entry into the national park). If only a few can participate and I try to be an examle of social justice, was I being hypocritical by becoming one of the few for a week? While the restricted access factor remains true and still bothers me to some degree, Lindblad and NatGeo brightened my perspective of the cruise option as ecological, educational and socially-responsible.

The lodging, programming, food and service were all of premium quality, but the crew emphasized our responsibility to minimize our ecological footprint and respect national park rules and local culture. The boat desalinizes its own water and we were given water bottles to overcome the need to buy water in plastic bottles. Fresh ingredients are carefully selected, washed and shipped in secure packaging in the airplane carrying passengers to the islands to diminish potential introduction of exotic species and combine two previous trips into one. Guests pre-choose their meals at dinner time to help the chef and cooks better calculate food, reducing waste. We reused our towels for several days and had the option to not have our bed linens changed halfway through the week (I saw about 1/3 of guests opt for this option, ~30/93). We received a presentation on the human history of the islands by our expedition leader, heard a representative from the Charles Darwin Foundation talk, and enjoyed local music and dance performed by a group of musicians (Ecoarte) from Santa Cruz Island. Furthermore, I estimate (because for privacy not fully disclosed) that at least 10 guests had paid either a reduced fare or won their trip through a raffle. For me, these examples represent balanced steps towards ecological, educational and social responsibility in tourism in Galapagos.

In short, we visited 18 amazing, pristine protected sites, saw all the wildlife we set out to see (collectively, not individually, but regardless, this is not always possible!), and learned about local Galapagos residents and efforts to safeguard the islands. We even had the pleasure of sharing our expedition with the Editor-in-Chief of the National Geographic magazine and his family!

Although I still hope access can be expanded to allow local residents the possibility to better appreciate the beautiful islands in which they reside, I saw many examples of how Lindblad and National Geographic are making this happen. Hands down, I recommend if you save up to visit Galapagos, please consider taking this cruise. You will have no regrets. http://www.expeditions.com/Ship_Detail92.asp?Ship=5

On the other hand, if the price-range out of your budget, come visit us at our Hacienda Tranquila: www.haciendatranquila.com ! The only favor I ask anyone visiting these beautiful islands is to think about how you can help conserve your local beautiful and unique places. There are countless ones around the world- we just need to open our eyes and appreciate them.

Please see my photos below- I will write more up about each day with more photos in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, here is a preview. I would love to receive your thoughts and comments. J  

Saturday, March 31, 2012: San Cristobal Island, Cerro Brujo

I love this part of San Cristobal because of the view of Leon Dormido in the background and the circuline sand. Unfortunately, I did not walk around much as I needed Saturday to get my sea legs under me!

Sunday, April 1, 2012: My 30th Birthday on Espanola Island

Me posing by a Nazca booby and the mini geyser formed from an underwater cave on the rocky coast. We also blue-footed boobies, marine iguanas and waved albatross. I even got a special birthday cake at dinner. What a day!

Monday, April 2, 2012: Floreana Island

Yet another magical island, our visit to Floreana was mesmerizing. We saw female sea turtle tracks from hours earlier when they came to lay their eggs, Floreana mockingbird, finches, lava lizards and even flamingos.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012: Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz

No visit is complete with a giant tortoise! This lady (or gent- not sure!) just emerged from a nice mud bath to remove parasites and relieve the heat.

The human-animal interactions has impacted natural behavior, or has it? All animals in Galapagos live in harmony- if a sea lion starts to live in harmony with the fisherman, isn't this another example of harmony in the animal kingdom?

These lovely ladies performed for us as part of the local group Ecoarte with beautifully designed and hand-painted Galapagos skirts. I am sending them this photo and hope to stay in touch. We need more positive programming like this for youth in our islands!

Wednesday, April 4: Santa Cruz, Eden and Daphne

Yet another day of magical, volcanic places! Here is a marine iguana taking a sun bath. (Can you find him? Like his fellow galapaguenans, he camouflages well!)

We also got to play "hide and seek" with the land iguanas, spotting 10! This one looked like he wanted to give a high five of congratulations! Can you make out some of the metamorphological differences between the marine and land iguanas?

Here is a Geo iguana enjoying the fabulous Ecuadorian buffet at lunch.

Thursday, April 5: Famous Bartolome and Sombrero Chino Snorkeling

Yet again a must, a visit to Pennacle Rock or Bartolome- 6:30 am is the best visiting time!

Geo's brother and guide Fernando showed them an underwater cave- likely Geo's highlight of the trip.

 We were also happy to see some little black and white friends there- Galapagos penguins!

Friday, April 6, 2012: Genovesa, bird paradise

We got to see tens of red-footed boobies in the red mangroves. This one looked right at me as if to say, "This is my home. Can I help you?"

The baby boobies were so curious to see us- this one is a Nazca booby (if I recall correctly).

This juvenile frigate bird seemed to be wondering why the male was puffed up looking up at the ladies in the air. I imagine him saying, "Dad, what are you doing?"

And I think I have it bad… reflections on beginning the Balanced Steps Program in San Cristobal Island, Galapagos

Having just disembarked from a luxury Galapagos expedition cruise three weeks after permanently moving from Washington, DC, I am yet again facing the phenomenon of culture shock: Galapagos volcanic and tropical island culture shock to be exact. Our large and spacious home has no air conditioning, and upon our return after a week of rain and closed dank air, mold was growing on surfaces I have never before seen. The dirt that comes in through the window screens from the unpaved, volcanic rock street is my constant enemy as I sweep and mop the tile floors for hours on end. My washing machine mysteriously still leaves brown spots on my husband and my favorite clothes, despite my best efforts of a two hour deep cleaning and regular wipe downs. Water is often scarce, and even though we have a sizeable cistern and expense water pump, the water pressure and quality still are lacking in comparison with my native USA. And yet, I pause and pull myself out of my self-pity to analyze: do I really have it so bad? Sure, internet access is a major limitation to contact with the outside world and knowledge sharing, but at least I can afford to pay a few cents to use the super slow cyber café. Yes, my house is dank and musty at times, but at least my enclosure is secure to limit insects and rodents that must be obnoxious, unwanted house guests for my neighbors with boarded houses and no insulation at all. Yes, my main option to dry my clothes and delicates is in direct site of my mechanic neighbor and his complete family and friends constantly hanging around close to our backyard. Yet really, if I want the simple life with balanced steps towards sustainability, I need to ask myself the question, do I really have it so bad? To which the obvious answer is “no.”

We Americans have these expectations of the good life that include a great deal of expendable income to travel and buy what we like, central cooling (and heating) in a luxuriously furnished home, and the convenience to do what we like when we like, with the obvious basic needs of comfortable shelter, food, water, electricity, trash and sewer all taken care of without much question. However, very rarely do we question our ecological footprint: how many acres of land are necessary to provide the raw products and how many people’s labor are essential to create these final products and services for our consumption? This is an issue I am hoping to address with my program; however, I do recognize I must address it personally first and provide an example if I hope that others may be interested in researching the issue and working on their ecological footprints as well.

Thus, the Balanced Steps program is slowly coming along in the planning phase. I have applied for external funding and won the mayor’s agreement to receive municipal sponsorship and funding in the out years. I am exploring the possibility of teaching English for this year with environmental subject matter to begin the bilingual environmental education experience in a formal setting, and hopefully we will expand into extracurricular activities as well. This process will definitely follow one balanced step after another!