EcoGuardianes: A Startup Story
EcoGuardianes
humble beginnings started as Guardianes de Los Rios; an idea to clean the
Tárcoles River. The Tárcoles River is
the most contaminated river in Central America and is tied into both
environmental and social problems in Cost Rica.
But it was soon realized that the problem was far larger than just the
river. The problem involved the entirety
of the watershed (all the way up the mountains), the human communities that
lived there, and the plants and animals that made it their home; the entirety
of the ecosystem had to be the focus.
And so, the idea of EcoGuardianes was born!
 |
| Arayan Waterfall |
Nelson Mandela once said, ‘Vision without action is just a dream,
action without vision just passes the time, vision with action can change the
world.’ For EcoGuardianes to move
forward it needed more than just the idea; it needed a plan of action.
 |
| Our low-tech way of drawing up EcoGuardianes strategic program plan. |
The
creation of a strategic program plan is not an easy task. It takes time (a lot of it), concentration,
and commitment. For days, the ADE
staff sat around a table and discussed the future direction of
EcoGuardianes. Creating an organization's
strategic program plan starts with the creation of the organizations vision and
mission statements. These statements describe why the organization exists and,
broadly, how they will accomplish their task.
Once these were solidified, we moved to EcoGuardianes core values; the
values we would hold every step of the rest of the program plan to.
 |
| Barva to Paos bio-corridor. |
The
creation of these statements and values was difficult enough, but next came the
arduous task of forming the strategies and establishing each actionable step in
the long progression from Vision to on the ground work. The process took much longer than
expected. We went through multiple
renditions, revisions, and an uncountable number of cups of coffee. But the process was needed and worth it. EcoGuardianes is still in its infancy, but
now we know where we want to go and how we are going to get there. Now that the map is drawn, we can start our
journey down the untamed road.
Comments
Post a Comment