To educate our communities on sea turtles and how liter, fishing nets & line, as well as light adversely affect them. According to the World Wide Wildlife organization, "nearly all species of sea turtle are now classified as endangered, with three of the seven existing species being critically endangered." My group will research what threats the sea turtles currently face, brainstorm solutions, and incorporate educating the community as part of their solution.
We are collaborating with several schools in the Cayman Islands. We want to set up a turtle festival either on the beach or the parking lot of a local business. We would also use these funds to help us purchase some type of give away to remind people to fill the holes and pick up trash before leaving the beach. We would also like an item to remind home owners & businesses to turn off lights. We plan on distributing educational booklets that they already created with a previous R&S grant, but would like to be able to fund and launch a local "Turtle Festival" to encourage the community as a whole to get involved in making the changes necessary to take all turtles off of the endangered list. They plan to share their ideas, what is currently working in our area and what is not with students in the Cayman Islands. They want to build off of each other's ideas and collaborate with kids in a way that will help them to get to know kids from a different part of the world and different culture than their own. We hope to facilitate some discussions between the kids similar to that of the human library, where they can get to know each other through e-mail, mail, and correspondence via Zoom. Ultimately we would love for the kids to meet in person and to be a part of each other's turtle festival.
