Maritza Morales Casanova: The New Noah's Ark

Buenas tardes a los que hablan español, mucho gusto. Good afternoon, it's a pleasure to be here with you all. People say that our community needs more scientists, more writers, entrepreneurs, and social leaders. But that's why society should focus on childhood. Allowing them to be entrepreneurs from childhood.

Let's imagine that you are a child who wants to be a baseball player. What should you do? Practice? Of course, practice, and go to the baseball school. If you want to be a pianist or a violinist, you should go to the music school. If you as a child, want to be a singer, there are places where you can be trained. But if you want to be an environmentalist where can you receive training? There are no place. There were no places to go.

In 1995 I was 10 when I decided to start doing something to help Grandmother Earth. I invited my friends to meet after school and I told them about environmental issues. We wanted to protect animals, plants and humans. And dreamed about spreading our movement around the world. Our name was HUNAB, and it stands for Humans Unite with Nature in Harmony for Beauty, Welfare, and Willingness. We discovered that the worst environmental problem that our society has to face is not pollution, nor extinction, nor illegal trade, neither global warming. The worst environmental problem is the lack of education because this is the root for all those problems. But we, as a group, we have faced our own challenge, the lack of credibility because of our age. Fortunately and after 19 years, we survived it.

And now we are focused on education as our main element to solve and to eradicate environmental problems. Education is a continuous process where a person acquires knowledge, awareness, and the skills to make decisions. Education requires continuous time and efforts. And in fact, I am still astonished about why, in my country, and in the world, environmental education is not included as a main subject in the school's curriculum, when Mexico is one of the megadiverse countries in the world. Natural resources are the basis of our economy. And education is a tool to eradicate poverty. If a country has problems with the economy or development, this country can survive. It will have more time to solve it. But if a country has problems with its natural resources or environment, this country will not have more time to solve it because this is the basis for their health, development, and growth, their heritage, and their sovereignty.

With my group, I decided to found a non-profit institution in 2006. Now we are focused on four different programs. Let's see each one of them. The first one is Methodologies. To teach in a fun way, those topics that seem complex to explain. Now, thanks to the children's contribution, we can approach them in an easy and transcending way. In fact, children are very creative. Thanks to their ideas, we have generated books, stories, hand crafts, and games. Children show us everyday the best language to teach. This was a mournful march to recognize the extinct species in Mexico. The 41 extinct species. When I say environmental education, I don't refer to natural sciences, I mean a comprehensive vision of all the issues around. Here you can see how we approach water culture, biodiversity, energy, environment and ecology, humanitarian culture, and also laws.

In fact, we have an educational plan, we call it Mondambientes. Mondambientes in Spanish stands for, Changing Environment. It's like a career to be an environmentalist from childhood. During two years, a child needs to learn about these 17 main topics. But the information is according to their age. Let's see only one, the number 14. To organize fishing and sustainable development, a child is going to learn about close seasons, fishing techniques, ecosystems for fishing, conservation, native biodiversity, and sustainable aquaculture, and then they can take action. Because now they have a comprehensive idea about how their actions have a positive impact on their communities.

The second program is about courses with workshops where children are teaching other children. Yes, they are training their peers during two years, in order to train them as environmental instructors. That's why I say that they are the heroes of our Grandmother Earth. Because children's hands may be small, but their hearts are immense to save our planet. In fact, children who have participated in this program have learned about how to respect nature, how to respect environment, but also this program has changed lifestyle. Due to the mentorship activities, there are children who've started their own activities, their own movements, and they have been awarded by the Mexican authorities. In fact, we have met with the last four presidents of Mexico. The third program is sustainable aquaculture production systems where we are rescuing native species like the Mayan Apple Snail to the extent that our communities are now more aware of their natural resources. They will be able to properly use their native species, and also to reactivate their local economies.

And finally, the fourth program is Ceiba Pentandra. Ceiba Pentandra is the name of the first high-level environmental educational training center in the world. In 2007 the city of Merida donated us a land. In 2012 we started the construction. Thanks to the Mexico Initiative Award and the Young Laureates Rolex Award for Enterprise, there were $500,000 to invest. It allowed us to build only 30 percent of the construction, but this year we have a big challenge. We need to raise enough funds to complete the construction. Only two million dollars. Yeah. And these are some areas that we need to build. We need some museums, we need an aquarium, a library, and an experimental laboratory too.

But why is Ceiba Pentandra so important? Why? There are other Mexican states asking for their own environmental theme park. Because with a 100 percent of the construction we will be able to receive 64,000 children a year. With a successful methodology we can be an ally for the educational system. Also, a lot of space for young people, handicapped, and elderly. With our expertise, we can train teachers, and provide them methodologies and materials too. And also, with our expertise, we can contribute to generate the free textbooks for the educational system, like this one for the curriculum. This project can be replicated in any place of Mexico or in the world.

Now, I brought a new project, and you're going to be the first ones to know about this. In Ceiba Pentandra we reinvented the Noah's Ark. Yes, the Noah's Ark. We reinvented... In moments of crisis, the Noah's Ark saved, protected, and rescued wildlife, all the living beings. But now our Grandmother Earth needs our support. Needs to protect the living beings now. Here are some features of the reinvented Ark developed in Ceiba Pentandra. The first one is that this can cross geographical borders. Another novel feature is that it can adapt to the urgent needs of harmonizing the humans coexistence. Also the size was redesigned so that all the tools required for sustainable management can be transported, constructed, or modified within the ark. This ark can improve under adverse situations. Some contributions of this new ark is that if we can activate it and distribute this prototype around the world, we will allow a stronger human contributions.

Also, we will ensure the protection of living beings on ground and oceans. We can harmonize the coexistence of cultures. And we can save natural resources. But thanks to children's ideas in my organization, we discovered that with this reinvented ark, we can save the most important species in the world, humans. Also, we need your contributions. I don't mean money, although it is also necessary. I mean your ideas, perseverance, and participation to consolidate it.

Well, I think that it's time to discover this reinvented ark. Are you ready? Yeah! OK. This is the reinvented ark. Yes, all this time I was talking about human brains. Our brains are like arks. Each time that we make a decision to protect a living being, a plant, a human, an animal, we are acting like an ark. And this ark has always have been there. We only need to consolidate it and to reactivate it. We only need to distribute these arks around the world, as much as we can. That's why we need to consolidate Ceiba Pentandra. That's why we need more environmental educational training centers around the world. That's why we need to train more heroes of Grandmother Earth. But we need to work together. Decision makers, media, companies, authorities, we do need you. See, if we work united, with these new arks, we will ensure a prosperous and harmonious life for our Grandmother Earth. Thank you.