• Neighbouring Communities & Local Economy Stimulation
• Educational Support

Pacific Olive Ridley Turtle laying eggs

Turtle Conservation Group of Malena in action

Palmilla is located in Mariato District between Malena and Palo Seco on the western coast of Azuero peninsula opposite Cébaco island. Palmilla is within the buffer zone surrounding Coiba Island World Heritage Site and the Gulf of Montijo RAMSAR wetland.

NEIGHBOURING COMMUNITIES & LOCAL ECONOMY STIMULATION

MALENA

The community of Malena protects their beach and the four species of turtles (Leatherback, Loggerhead, Pacific Olive Ridley and Green turtle) that lay their eggs on Malena beach from July to November some up to December. The community has been supported by Peace Corps volunteers, the local non governmental organisation Mar Viva (Living Sea) and Albatros Media, during the start-up of the project, but is now independent.

We support the community association and with the conservation activities. Mar Viva has organized several workshops for members and their children to learn about turtles, nature conservation and tourism and Peace Corps placed a volunteer with the Malena association to help them achieve their goals. You can support the association directly. Send us an e-mail.

Peace corps volunteers have been with the Malena community about 4 years. Peace corps supports various community initiatives and at the moment there are 4 volunteers on the western coast of Azuero (and 20 in total in Veraguas). Some of these also work with nature conservation and tourism and others help set up local businesses. We are willing to support their activities for the better outcome in the communities.

This is their website but they do not change it often: www.playamalena.org

MORILLO

Morillo is a 5 km long beach with several small settlements. Some of the people there, with the aid of a Peace corps volunteer, are also setting up turtle protection. Their beach also has some interesting mangrove, and people can take you to the river nearby to show you one of our poisoned dart frogs.

The people are trying to learn English but will do their best to make you happy.

Note: the frogs are not infected with the fungus that kills frogs worldwide, so if you have visited other frogs, make sure you tell us or them to assure that your shoes will be disinfected!

FLORES

Flores is a village on the edge of Cerro Hoya National Park and a small conservation group was formed there. They have had some support from MIDA to start the breeding of pacas and peccaries. The individual members know their way around in the Cerro Hoya mountains and know where the painted parakeets, great green macaws, spider monkeys and howler monkeys can be found. They also know a lot about medicinal use of plants.

We so far only do day tours as camping is only for the die hards and researchers. There is a Peace Corps volunteer based in Flores and limited local accommodation is available.

EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT

Children are the future and we allow several of the primary schools in the area to explore our grounds for tourism and biology education. We are constantly looking to provide information on nature for children, as well as equipment for sports or inputs for special celebration days such as tree planting day (19 May) and Children’s day (1 June).

We also would like to build on our relations with the secondary school in Mariato as well as with the Universities in Santiago. We have had local students writing papers about our project. We also have had students from the Tourism Institute from Breda in the Netherlands who helped us with the initial marketing and we do get the occasional student in entomology or biology. Our soil samples and topography data have been added to the Santiago University’s data base.

We are willing to work with students and graduates of several universities and can provide guidance.

We are fond of the Summit Municipal Park and are linked to a group that would like to improve the conditions of animals in captivity. We also support {Fundación Avifauna Eugene Eisenmann} and have organized with them activities to protect nature and specifically the Great Green Macaw, at the Flores primary school.

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We are recycling and intend to stimulate the neighbouring communities to also recycle their non-organic valuable waste like glass, cans, iron and separate the very toxic waste. We hope to turn some of this recycling into small income generating activities!

Not only do we impact less on the environment by buying and supplying local foods, we thus stimulate the local economy and support the local livelihoods. Our white cheese comes from a neighboring farmer!

Soon we hope to add a ‘food production tour’, for you to see how the white cheese is made, how the coffee grows and is processed, and even how chocolate is made from the cacao beans.

We have recruited all our day-labourers in the region and also our permanent staff is from the area in order to support the local community and to further gain their support. We have trained our staff to enhance their capacity (also some English!), pay fair salaries and register all our staff with the social security service of Panama.