Co-Galapagos: Funding a Sustainable Future

Co-Galapagos is an initiative giving power to local communities to build a sustainable future for the Galapagos Islands. By matching community-led projects with seed funding from overseas, the project is empowering people to tackle social justice and conservation issues in meaningful ways, whilst also providing new leadership and educating communities about the UN Sustainable Development Goals in Galapagos.

We are currently crowdfunding for three projects that have been designed and led by the local community across the Galapagos Islands:

RecyKlaas: Local glass upcycling

Moisés Moya established his RecyKlaas initiative in his back garden, collecting waste glass bottles and using them to make bespoke drinking glasses. His intention is to collect used, imported bottles directly from local businesses, convert them into glasses and then supply these to homes in the community and the same businesses that the bottles were collected from. In this way, his project will reduce glass waste and give a new life to discarded bottles, reducing the need for the importation of new glasses and other glass utensils.

Following the successful first phase of this project, which saw the production of glasses for every family in Floreana, we now wish to provide Moisés with new machinery. This will replace his (extremely innovative but not long-lasting) homemade machinery and enable him to set up properly as a glass upcycling business.

Juego Infantil: Building a playground for young children

Marianita Mora Pallo leads a neighbourhood group in San Cristobal, which has been working to restore a degraded public space on the coast and create a children’s playground. They have installed floodlights, cleaned the area, pruned the vegetation and installed new equipment. Thanks to their efforts, the park has become a popular spot for children, but they do not have the budget to finish the final stage of the project.

This will see the installation of playground equipment for children under five years old, locally designed and created from sustainable bamboo. Parents of young children, who currently have limited space to socialise, will be able to use this space to meet and enjoy time together. Fostering relationships in the community like this, particularly among mothers, is an important part of encouraging mutual support, reducing abuse and improving mental health.

CENDA: Art, music and dance as tools for wellbeing

Viviana Varela is a local inspiration in Galapagos, working tirelessly to preserve traditional Ecuadorian culture, dance and costume. Through her work with children and young people on the Islands, she has instilled a love of the arts into the community and the many tourists who are fortunate enough to watch their regular Friday evening performances in Puerto Ayora. Providing teenagers with support and extracurricular activities, she also helps to keep drug use levels down and fosters a sense of identity and belonging among these young people.

Viviana applied to Co-Galapagos with a plan for a workshop series in Santa Cruz, covering different types of performing arts, each centred around traditional Ecuadorian practices. The first of these has a focus on music and will involve not only children and teenagers, but their parents too, and will culminate in a series of public shows for the community.