What We Do

Indigenous Health Improvement

Marked health improvement of indigenous communities

Many of the ecosystem imbalances in Bocas Archipelago impact the indigenous villages and communities hardest. With the overfishing, local fishermen providing for their family are subsisting on a diet of mostly rice having lost many local fish habitats.

Local Sustainable Fish Habitat

It is our intention that by creating flourishing fish habitats, we can rebuild an essential food source in the Ngäbe diet.

With these programs, in collaboration with likeminded organizations, we aspire to develop a series of thoughtful community impact events; it is important that native Bocas residents gain appreciation and education sparking desire and action to protect and nourish local resources, while benefitting individually, economically, and as a community.

Our Programs

Restored Fish Habitat

Grandparents remember when there were literal shoals of fish, and fishermen would come home with hundreds of pounds of fish to sell and provide for the local villages. Now, the collapsed fisheries no longer support the dietary needs of Ngäbe.

Community Education

Building parternships with educators, local NGO’s, and Panamanian government organizations to create future generations of conservationist Bocatoreñeans. Providing education content, experiences and curriculum.

Conservation

Researching conservation needs and opportunities, partnering with local organizations to further protect valuable resources in the peninsula, with long term projects targeting protecting reef and habitat.

Why Indigenous Health

Creating a controlled access system of local fish habitats managed to supplement the needs of local villages

It stands to reason, that a society that was traditionally dependent on harvesting resources from the sea would turn to that avenue for economic support in an environment of changing social and administrative conditions. Unfortunately, technological progress often makes it possible to exceed the limits of sustainability if awareness and accountability are not instilled in some effective manner.

The fisheries of the Bocas del Toro archipelago are a perfect example. For several generations, fishing in one form or another created an economy for the indigenous and native residents of the region. The unpleasant truth is that the development of and technological advances within the fishing industry created a condition of acute resource collapse for the marine ecosystem of the entire region.

In one of our coral restoration/fisheries recovery projects Caribbean Coral Restoration teamed up with a local non-profit organization Floating Doctors. Through our interactions with them, we learned that a disproportionate number of indigenous children are experiencing stunted growth due to a lack of available protein in the early stages of their life. The reason for this was traced to the lack of economic ability to purchase protein coupled with the inability to provide a consistent source through acquisition of seafood in any form.

Our joint project with Floating Doctors is to create a controlled access system of local fish habitats that can be managed to supplement the needs of specific villages.

It is a small step in a big mission but we will recognize success as we are able to verify the ability of local fishermen to once again harvest sufficient protein from the sea and maintain conditions of sustainability.