Environmental education in Sarapiqui

Four rural schools located near La Selva Biological Station participated last year in the Fairchild Challenge.

The Fairchild Challenge is run out of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Florida, USA. It is an environmental education outreach program that offers a menu of Challenge options for schools to develop during the year.

The projects are oriented towards environmental topics like planting a school garden, creating objects out of recycled materials and painting murals. All projects earn points for the school and at the end of the year the school with the most points gets a computer.

In 2008, thanks to La Selva’s Environmental Education program, around 250 children in four schools from the Sarapiqui area participated in the Fairchild Challenge. La Trinidad school won first place and La Flaminea came in second.

It was an excellent year, both in terms of the quality of the projects and the children’s enthusiasm. We were able to accomplish that both first and second place winners received a computer, and thanks to Idea Wild, third and fourth place (El Tigre and Naranjal) also received a laptop”, said Marylin Veiman, coordinator of the Environmental Education program at La Selva.

She hopes to involve 3 more local schools this year.