Matthew Peters

Elementary students create their own insects using different materials.

Our park started the project on February 27. Our weekly program is as scheduled: Monday - Friday we teach morning classes to elementary school children. Tuesdays and Thursdays the local high school participates in activities in the park. And on Monday and Friday the junior high schools do activities. We will be providing activities for 10 diffent school and will have and impact on over 1100 student in San Andres Peten.

Our project has already sparked an interest in the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Environment of Guatemala. We are now fully sponsered by the two Ministries and participate in their workshops and general planning meeting. Our full time teacher Inoky Cameros Ruiz will be attending most of the workshops and will also participate in a program to train other communities on our environmental education system.

As for the park, all of our other projects are up and running. They include our small animal projects, our medicinal plant garden, our tree nursery, agricultural area, volunteer program, and our newly created Spanish Language School, which provide income for the families and teachers of San Andres Peten.

Our program is running strong and we have already provided classes to over 1,100 students in San Andres. We will begin to provide our second round of activites starting in mid-June.

Our ecological park has also improved leaps and bounds and we now have a new water tower, bungalows, chicken coop, and environmental education center. We invite all to come and visit our program anytime during the year and to learn more about our goals and our achievements.

Students plant, grow and harvest their own crops, prepare their own tree nursery and help to reforest areas in San Andres.

A 2nd RSG grant has been awarded for the continuation of this project.

For three years, Volunteer Petén has been actively working with the rain forest of Guatemala, education in schools, and with the community of San Andres, Petén by protecting and managing an ecological reserve in San Andrea. We now hope to explain and provide all the information that we have gathered over the years about the environment and land management to the community.

The first step will be creating an interactive and attractive Natural History Museum that displays all the information on the fauna and flora of the Petén and Guatemala. By providing free and accurate information to the public, we hope to educate all local students and community members about the environment and conservation.

For more information contact volunteerpeten@hotmail.com or go to http://www.volunteerpeten.com

Read about the activities undertaken and findings of this project in the final report below.