Fight plastic pollution in the bay of Cartagena

Summer of Trees and Seas

 June, July, August and September 2022

This summer Fundación Bahía joined the international Trees and Seas Festival in an effort to unite, underscore and touch upon the conservation of forests and seas. We often speak of or focus on only one or the other, but the truth is that we depend on both for our oxygen, our rain and for the health of the planet. The interconnectedness between ecosystems mirrors our own. Although Fundación Bahía´s main focus lies on the ocean, we decided to underline the importance of each and every planetary ecosystem by joining this amazing festival!

Our Trees and Seas celebration started off with the blast of our amazingly beautiful art exhibit, with the help of more than 10 artists in tune with our conservation and education efforts. Many thanks to all the artists that contributed and showed their fantastic work!

A rainy day beach clean up, with volunteers from Cojowa and the Red Nacional de Ambiente, was also a hit! Around 30 volunteers helped recollect a total of 50  kilos of residues.  

Fundación Bahía hosted a super fun workshop for all of the students at the Punta Arena Primary School, with a viewing of Ekko. They loved everything they learned, the music from the documentary and the interactive game at the end!

 There was also a viewing of Against the Swell in the Historic Museum of Cartagena (MUHCA) in the impressive Palace of the Inquisition!

In honor of the trees, we planted lemon, orange and mango trees in the island of Tierra Bomba, where we also conducted a cleanup that very same day! Volunteers from Prosegur Foundation were especially zealous and helped recollect 100 kilos of residues from the trail and beaches in the community.

Thanks to all the volunteers that came to our activities and contributed towards the sustainability of our communities and city. Thanks to all of you for your donations and continued support!

2022 is proving to be a year of opportunities and surprises! While starting slowly during the first 3 months, in April the energy rocketed to the sky! We celebrated our first ever Plastic Fishing Event with Corona and over 90 local fishermen participated! With a record of 4 tons of plastic from the sea, beaches and mangroves, the effort left us dreaming of winning this never-ending fight against plastic pollution! The event left a major positive impact in the community with the donation of a plastic compacting machine for the local recycling association. p

The basis of it all is the education! Our educational program Clean Seas: Guardians of the Ocean is gaining track with four new schools taking advantage of our workshops and beach clean ups. Volunteers from Cojowa, Montessori, Gimnasio Everest and the public primary school in la Boquilla Sede San Felipe are making strides and becoming guardians of the ocean. Our workshop in la Boquilla the 1^st of June was amazing with 23 students per session for 1^st, 3^rd and 5^th grades. Girls and boys from la Boquilla learned to separate residues and of the importance of preserving their beloved ecosystems. Then, they played fun games reinforcing all they had learned! We hope to broaden the scope and work with more public schools in the coming months, so please help us reach more students through your generous donations!

Thanks to the involvement of the Latimpact congress we were able to organize a cleanup and mangrove planting in Punta Arena on April 24th. Many thanks to the 38 volunteers from Latimpact and to the members of the community with whom we planted 50 mangrove trees! The goal was to mitigate the carbon footprint, aid this vulnerable swampland regain equilibrium and fortify conservation efforts and intent within the community in the island of Tierra Bomba.

Another great milestone reached during April was the ESMT team visit, with an amazing group of committed and brilliant students who analyzed in depth and recommended great improvements to the Foundation´s organizational and operative structure. Many thanks for their contributions and energy. We miss having them in our events and activities and hope they will come back soon!

The educational effort to organize a sunset workshop finally took the perfect form. Many thanks to the support from Escuela Taller and their historian Rodrigo Alfaro, who conducted an amazing historical workshop, while we touched upon the environmental importance of our bay. Coming soon our very own hearing aids for these workshops reaching a higher level!

Thank you for your continued support to our project and our work. We hope you will continue supporting efforts to rid the ocean from plastic and to strengthen the education within our communities and city. If you come to Cartagena please join our sunset educational workshop in the bay. We want locals and visitors to learn about the environmental, cultural and historical importance of the bay. To learn about the bay enables us to love it, in order to better care for it! Thank you for reading!