Community program
The sanctuary belongs to everyone who cares for it.
Villanueva, Bolívar · Neighbors of the sanctuary
Conservation is neighborliness.
The tropical dry forest isn't restored from the outside: it's restored with the people who live in it. The foundation works with the community of Villanueva not as an occasional visitor but as a neighbor. This program opens its fieldwork days to anyone who wants to join, at no cost and with no barriers.
Purpose
For the residents of Villanueva to have an active connection with the sanctuary — not just as bystanders to a project happening nearby, but as participants in its care. So that knowledge about fauna, flora, and territory flows in both directions.
How to get involved
We open community days throughout the year where residents join the team on real tasks: planting native trees, monitoring wildlife, maintaining trails, feeding birds. There's an open call, and work happens in guided subgroups.
We also welcome local initiatives: if a village school, a youth group, or a women's collective wants to organize their own day, we build it together.
What you do, what you learn
Five practices rooted in the land
Walk the neighboring forest
Recognizing species by local name, listening to the birds in the neighborhood, mapping areas you know but never named. The forest becomes familiar.
Plant for your children
Each tree stays in the territory. You plant it, and it grows alongside the kids from the village.
Log known wildlife
Learning to put into data what the community already knows: when the guayacán blooms, when the macaws arrive, where the gallinetas nest.
Care for the sanctuary animals
Help prepare food and do the aviary rounds. Meet the parrots the foundation rehabilitates and releases across Bolívar.
Maintain the trails
Maintaining the infrastructure that biologists, volunteers, and the local community use to enter the forest. It's invisible work, but critical.
The forest doesn't take care of itself. It takes care of itself with its neighbors.
Logistics
Community days are free and last between half a day and a full day. They are announced in advance through WhatsApp, local networks, and in the village. The foundation provides tools, water, and a snack. Participants only need comfortable clothes, a cap, and a willingness to work.
Contribution
What gets built with the community is social fabric: neighbors who meet each other in the forest, young people who discover trades, elders who share traditional knowledge. The foundation alone cannot care for the tropical dry forest — with neighbors, it can.
Want to join the next session?
Write to us on WhatsApp and we'll let you know when we schedule the next one.