A Mesoamerican reef protection workshop is being held at the Biltmore this week. Conservationists and other stakeholders from Belize, Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua organized an 8 day workshop on the protection of the Mesoamerican reef system -which starts at the tip of Yucatan Peninsula and stretches down to Belize. We spoke with the coordinator today and she told us why this discussion on the reef needs to happen.
Maria Eugenia Arreola, Director, Mesoamerican Reef Leadership Program
"What we do is, every year we open up a call for applications and we invite entrepreneurs and young conservationists who are initiating their career or are in the middle of their career to join the program with a proposal, an idea of a project that they can implement in protection of the coral reefs. So during one year we bring them together four times in this workshop. And right now we are in the fourth workshop of the 2014 cohort and we train them on advocacy, how to speak in public, how to speak with the media, how to raise funds - fundraising. We also train them on negotiation and conflict resolution. Our vision is to have a healthy reef and prosperous communities. So more than 2 million people depend on the health of the Mesoamerican reef right. So what we want to do is we want to launch high impact projects that will be led by conservationists that have the skills, that have the tools, the knowledge and that they are going to succeed in their projects. At the end, what we want is the sustainable use of our natural resources. We are very lucky to have this important ecosystem and we want to provide different solutions and projects that will help us to use of our resources in a sustainable way."
Today the participants went to Hol Chan marine reserve as part of the workshop.
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