Water connects everything.
It connects forests to communities, farms to families, and the health of an ecosystem to the people who depend on it every day. For Splendor Water, it also connects our business directly back to Ecuador — the country and natural environment that give us our water.
That is why, since 2022, we have partnered with CASA Interamericana, an umbrella environmental organization working across northwest Ecuador to protect water, forests, biodiversity and the communities that call them home.
What began as support for several grassroots initiatives has grown into a long-term partnership spanning environmental education, water monitoring, native-species reforestation, sustainable livelihoods and community legal defense.
Four years later, we’re incredibly proud of how much that work has grown — and even more excited about what we’re continuing to build together.
Our Impact Together, So Far
Through CASA and its network of community programs and partner organizations, Splendor Water’s support has helped contribute to:
- More than $78,000 donated by Splendor Water across our four-year partnership
- 17 Ecological Clubs operating across local communities
- 350+ children and adolescents participating in environmental education and conservation
- 10 strategic watersheds under community and technical water-quality monitoring
- 100,000 native trees planted through CASA’s broader reforestation program
- 17,500 native seedlings directly financed by Splendor Water across earlier phases of the partnership
- 72 criminal cases against environmental defenders dismissed
- 30+ environmental defenders supported in obtaining criminal amnesty during an earlier phase of the partnership
- Approximately 1,000 members represented through environmental and legal organization APT-Norte
- 32 individual water-use applications supported in two rural communities in 2025
- Multiple major mining concessions and projects suspended through legal strategies supported by CASA’s broader work
In 2026, Splendor increased its annual contribution to $33,307 — our largest commitment to the partnership to date — supporting another year of water monitoring, biodiversity research, environmental education, community organizing and legal defense.
Those numbers matter. But the story behind them matters even more.
So, What Exactly Is CASA Interamericana?
CASA is an umbrella organization built around a simple idea: you cannot protect an ecosystem without also supporting the people who live within it.
Its work brings together four interconnected areas: sustainable agriculture and alternative livelihoods; environmental education and water-quality monitoring; environmental and community legal defense; and native-species reforestation.
Instead of treating these as separate challenges, CASA connects them.
A farmer learning to reduce chemical inputs is helping protect a watershed. A child learning to test river water is becoming an environmental steward. A community securing its legal right to a water source is strengthening conservation. A native tree planted in a threatened landscape helps restore habitat for generations to come.
That interconnected approach is one of the reasons this partnership has meant so much to us.
It Starts With the Next Generation
One of our favorite parts of CASA’s work is its network of Ecological Clubs.
CASA began with a single club, Club Ecológico Toabunchi, where local children explored the forests, rivers and waterfalls surrounding their communities while learning how cloud forests support biodiversity, food security and clean water.
The program soon moved from simply learning about the environment to actively studying it. Children began conducting real water-quality monitoring, testing indicators including nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, phosphates, pH and fecal coliforms.
When Splendor began supporting the program, CASA was preparing to grow that model.
By 2023, there were 10 Ecological Clubs. Splendor helped restock water-monitoring kits, train volunteer guides, provide educational materials and supply trees for reforestation projects within the clubs’ watersheds.
By 2024, the network had grown to 15 clubs.
And by 2025, CASA was supporting 17 Ecological Clubs across 17 communities, engaging more than 350 children and adolescents in environmental education, water monitoring, ecological restoration and leadership development.
Splendor’s 2025 support helped each club conduct four field excursions, including transportation, food and water-monitoring equipment. More than 300 young people also came together for the Ecological Clubs Assembly to present community projects, exchange ideas and strengthen youth environmental leadership.
It is difficult to imagine a better long-term investment in conservation than helping young people understand the value of the ecosystem literally outside their front doors.
From Learning About Water to Protecting It
The Ecological Clubs are also part of a much bigger story around water.
By 2025, CASA and APT-Norte were carrying out water-quality monitoring across 10 strategic river watersheds facing current or potential mining pressure.
Community members, young people and researchers monitored indicators including pH, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, total dissolved solids and coliforms. CASA also developed a GIS-based water-quality database to help identify contamination hotspots and began work toward a permanent monitoring station.
Why does that matter?
Because these waterways are not simply lines on a map. They provide drinking water, irrigation and ecological connectivity for the communities around them.
Increasingly, the information gathered through environmental monitoring can also provide evidence that helps communities protect those water sources.
It is a powerful progression: education becomes data, and data becomes a tool for protection.
Giving Forests a Chance to Grow Back
Protecting water also means protecting the forests around it.
Through Canopy Co, CASA supports native-species reforestation using community nurseries adapted to different elevations and ecosystems — from high-altitude Andean forests to cloud forests and tropical lowlands.
The nurseries do double duty: they provide the native species needed to restore damaged ecosystems while also creating local economic opportunities.
During the 2022–23 reporting period, Splendor funding helped produce 7,500 native seedlings.
In 2024, we helped finance another 10,000 native seedlings, while CASA’s broader reforestation program planted more than 15,000 trees during the year.
By 2025, CASA had reached an incredible milestone:
100,000 native trees planted through the broader program.
Even more significantly, CASA reports that the majority have been planted within mining concession areas.
In that context, planting a tree is about more than restoration. It is an investment in watershed health, biodiversity and the long-term stewardship of landscapes facing environmental pressure.
Sometimes Protecting Water Means Going to Court
Conservation isn’t always about planting trees or testing rivers.
Sometimes it means giving communities the resources to defend what they already have.
That is where APT-Norte comes in. The environmental and legal organization was founded with CASA’s support to provide a collective legal voice for communities defending property, water and environmental rights in northern Ecuador. Today, APT-Norte represents approximately 1,000 members.
Splendor’s support has helped fund paralegal assistance, transportation, communications and technical mapping — the often-unseen infrastructure required for rural communities to navigate government agencies and complex legal processes.
The outcomes have been meaningful.
During an earlier phase of the partnership, APT-Norte helped more than 30 environmental defenders obtain criminal amnesty, while also supporting legal actions involving protest rights, community consultation and access to clean and sustainable water.
In 2024, APT-Norte reported the dismissal of 72 criminal cases brought against environmental defenders.
Its broader legal strategies have also contributed to the suspension of multiple mining concessions and projects in northern Ecuador.
And sometimes the victories are much more local — but no less important.
In 2025, APT-Norte helped prepare 32 individual water-use applications across Irubí and Cahuasquí and supported the successful legal recognition of the Río Manduriacu Chico community water board.
Those may sound like technical legal achievements. For the families involved, they can mean something much simpler: greater security over the water their communities depend on.
Building an Alternative, Not Just Fighting a Threat
One thing we particularly value about CASA is that its work isn’t solely defensive.
Through Finca La Fé, CASA’s organic farm, permaculture education center and headquarters, the organization explores ways for communities to build livelihoods that work with the surrounding environment.
Early initiatives included the creation of five bio-input production centers, where local producers learned to make organic fertilizers, fungicides and pesticides — helping create more sustainable approaches to agriculture and land use.
CASA has also supported biodiversity research designed not simply to document the extraordinary species found in these landscapes, but to provide a scientific foundation for future community-based tourism and other sustainable economic opportunities.
Because long-term conservation becomes much more powerful when protecting nature and creating opportunity can move forward together.