The Fly High Bird Club’s mission is to empower local Colombian youth to learn, appreciate and conserve their biodiversity through fun and engaging environmental education activities and field work. The Bird Club is currently based in the unique mountain of  Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Caribbean coast. It works with vulnerable, disadvantaged communities who otherwise have limited or no […]

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The Fly High Bird Club’s mission is to empower local Colombian youth to learn, appreciate and conserve their biodiversity through fun and engaging environmental education activities and field work. The Bird Club is currently based in the unique mountain of  Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Caribbean coast. It works with vulnerable, disadvantaged communities who otherwise have limited or no access to quality educational experiences and resources.

By working with marginalized youth, we want to raise awareness among younger generations about the natural abundance around them – particularly of birds, but not exclusively. This exploration leads to the understanding of nature and its processes, and further develops into appreciation. Appreciation for the local landscapes can mature into love for nature, which we believe is the seed of a new generation of young and passionate conservationists.

Our educational activities are always informal and voluntary. Depending on the location of the Bird Club, we collaborate with different organizations who can work with the kids from the local communities. The Bird Club is an independent informal education program that does not commit to national educational plans. Instead, it offers a voluntarily out-of-school activity for those interested.

We build our educational activities around 3 main pillars: birdwatching, arts and photography, and English.

Birdwatching is the perfect reason to bring kids into the outdoors and make them enjoy, explore and observe nature and wildlife. On these excursions, we always have a birdwatching guide, a pair of binoculars, and an educational tool in hand – an app, a booklet, etc. Those classes often include photography as it is a great way for the students to find the details that excite them the most. The camera lens helps students appreciate every detail of the ecosystem by letting them capture the elements which make their home so unique.

We also use art as a tool for personal expression, and a fun way to consolidate knowledge about topics learned during our workshops. Lastly, we always integrate English into our classes. As the Bird Club addresses global challenges on a local scale, communities need the skills to communicate and access information from the global scene. This is why we use English as an empowering tool for the kids to gain access to more information and resources available in this global language.

We always work toward tangible results like conducting mini BioBlitz, water quality analysis, and encouraging citizen science to contribute to the global conservation efforts.

Currently, we have weekly activities with 2 rural communities in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia. In Guachaca, we work with 10 youngsters in partnership with Costeño Social. Up in the mountains of La Tagua we work with 20 students from the local school. All our students are between 13 & 20 years old.