Week #2 - Meetings, a trip to Villa Rosa and a new recruit

Monday 12 September – Meeting community members of Channel Dique

This week started with a field trip for those interns responsible for the freshwater community projects. Adriana, Laura and Luz were invited by the community leaders to visit the town Villa Rosa to help the fishermen in the writing process of the project proposals (Location of Villa Rosa) .

Although the Internet connection was poor (i.e. non-existent) the interns and the community members made good progress and could establish the research area.

Tuesday 13 September - Meeting with FUPAC (Fundación Planeta Azul Caribe/ Foundation Blue Planet Caribbean)

On Tuesday we had a meeting with Luis Fernando, who is engaged in this project but is also head of the local organization FUPAC (http://planetaazulcaribe.org/). First Luis Fernando gave a presentation on FUPAC’s TRIADA model. The model aims to reveal sustainable solutions to environmental problems by engaging professionals and experts of different disciplines, industry, and community members. The ultimate goal is to find solutions that benefit all 3 actors (win-win).

Later, some students of the ‘Conservation Biology’ undergraduate course joined us for a presentation of applied examples of the TRIADA model: a school for fishermen (Channel Dique) and ‘Navegando por Cartagena’ (Translation: Navigate through Cartagena).

And the rest of the week...

On Wednesday we had our first official meeting with all the Interns and Dr. Gabriel Navas (Figure 7). We had the chance to present the status quo of our individual projects and get some feedback. Also we got to meet our new ‘recruit’ Josephine. Josie is on her work placement year from the University of Manchester and will be in Cartagena for the next 9 months.