Abstract
Art of Conservation (AoC) was founded in 2006 in Rwanda's Virunga Massif region, where the ideas and cooperation of local communities were incorporated to develop an innovative conservation education program and helped locals create their own non-profit - Conservation Heritage-Turambe (CHT). In 2014, recognizing a similar need for conservation education in the Mesoamerican Reef Region, AoC launched its four-module programming in several Mayan schools and communities bordering protected areas including the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve in Tulum, Mexico.
AoC envisions a biologically-diverse world where people, the environment, and animals thrive together in good health. Its mission is to empower children, families, and local communities in biodiverse regions to become conservation leaders through innovative art, health and educational programs. The approach is multidisciplinary and is based on one-health conservation. The free, extra-curricular courses include four modules: 1) Staying Healthy with One-Health Habits, 2) Exploring our Blue Planet, 3) Discovering the Animal Kingdom and 4) One-Health Conservation Connections & Expressions.
Our unique curriculum offers sessions that combine instructor-led presentations with hands-on activities that allow children to digest the information presented. AoC programs combine science and ecology lessons that explore the basic principles of healthy living while learning about global and local biodiversity and how all life is connected. We also teach basic elements and principles of art designed to give our students new ways to express their ideas. They learn to work with shape, color, value, texture, form, and composition, using a variety of media.
All our activities are designed to encourage children, their families, and local communities to explore the many connections between human, environmental, and animal health, and to understand how their actions have a ripple effect in each ecosystem. Role-modeling is an important aspect to our teaching. Presentations by professionals involved in human, environmental, and animal health are invited to our sessions. We also partner with these professionals and support their one-health work in the field. Our programs also build greater awareness of the need for healthy, sustainable living at all levels of the community by creating informal and formal job training opportunities. In doing so, we hope to inspire capacity building among locally and internationally hired AoC staff as well as those who participate in our programs.
We will be exhibiting some of the aquatic artwork created by the children and hope to have some of them join us at the poster reception so we get to interact with them!
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