Protecting the Galápagos isn't only about conserving its extraordinary wildlife, as we do within our partnership with Fundacion Jocotoco as the Official Conversation Ambassador of the Islands. It's also about ensuring that the people who call these islands home have the knowledge, experiences and tools to protect them for generations to come.
Since 2024, Splendor Water has partnered with Fundación ECOS to connect young Galapagueños with conservation through environmental education, citizen science and direct experiences in nature.
Together, we're helping take conservation out of the classroom and into the ecosystems themselves — giving young people opportunities to snorkel, kayak, monitor threatened species, protect nesting sites and ultimately become leaders within their own communities.
Our Impact at a Glance
In the first two years of our partnership, Splendor's support has helped Fundación ECOS:
- Train 24 Guardianes Marinos in 2024, reaching another 131 young people through hands-on marine experiences.
- Expand the program to 48 trained young instructors, with 108 students and 18 teachers participating directly in marine activities in 2025.
- Engage 311 community members in green sea turtle monitoring and nest protection.
- Monitor 24 nesting green sea turtles and protect 18 nests at Tortuga Bay.
- Launch a new citizen-science initiative that recorded 56 Galápagos giant tortoises during its pilot monitoring phase.
- Create four locally relevant sustainability education guides for Galápagos educators.
But the real impact lies in what happens next: young people experience these ecosystems, learn how to study and protect them, and then bring that knowledge back to their peers and communities.
From Students to Guardians
At the center of the partnership is Guardianes Marinos, a program built around a powerful idea: don't simply teach young people about conservation — train them to become conservation leaders themselves.
Young Guardianes learn about the marine ecosystems surrounding their islands and then help lead snorkeling, kayaking and educational experiences for other local students.
By 2025, 48 young people had been trained as instructors, helping bring direct marine experiences to students across Santa Cruz — including children who previously had limited opportunities to access the ocean surrounding their own community.
The idea is simple: it's easier to protect a place when you've had the opportunity to truly know it.
From Learning About Conservation to Doing It
As the partnership has grown, so has the responsibility placed in the hands of these young conservationists.
Working alongside Fundación ECOS and the Galápagos National Park Directorate, local youth are now participating directly in citizen-science programs protecting two of the islands' most iconic species: green sea turtles and Galápagos giant tortoises.
At Tortuga Bay, trained students helped lead 23 community monitoring outings during green sea turtle nesting season. Together, participants monitored nesting females, protected 18 nestsand collected information to better understand the species' reproductive success.
That work reached well beyond the students themselves: 311 members of the local community participated in monitoring and nest protection, turning conservation into something carried out not simply around the community, but by the community.
The same model is now expanding on land. A new giant tortoise citizen-science initiative brings students into rural and agricultural areas of Santa Cruz to collect conservation data alongside experts. During its pilot phase, teams recorded 56 giant tortoises, while students learned about their essential role in seed dispersal and ecosystem restoration.
Building Conservation Into Education
For lasting impact, those experiences also need to connect back to education.
Splendor's support helped develop four Education for Sustainable Development guides specifically grounded in the realities of the Galápagos, covering climate change, water and sanitation, responsible food systems, and equity and social justice.
That learning now extends into immersive conservation camps where students combine formal curriculum with fieldwork — from monitoring giant tortoises and invasive species to cultivating endemic plants, exploring mangroves and learning marine skills.
And it works: post-program evaluations showed measurable improvements in students' ecological knowledge, environmental attitudes and conservation skills.
When Young People Become Part of the Solution
This is where the impact of Fundación ECOS's model becomes much bigger than any single activity.
A young person experiences the marine environment surrounding their home. They become a Guardian Marino and introduce younger students to that same ecosystem. They learn scientific monitoring techniques and begin helping protect threatened wildlife. Families and community members join them.
Education becomes participation. Participation becomes stewardship.
Fundación ECOS reports that the programs are strengthening local conservation capacity while empowering children, young people and communities to become active participants in protecting the Galápagos' emblematic species.
For Splendor, that's the impact we want to help create: not simply teaching the next generation about conservation, but giving them a meaningful role in it.
Protecting the Places That Give Us Life
Splendor Water comes from Ecuador's extraordinary natural environment, and we believe protecting that natural heritage and empowering the communities connected to it go hand in hand.
With Fundación ECOS, that means investing in the young people who will inherit responsibility for one of the most extraordinary ecosystems on Earth.
Today, they're students, snorkelers, kayakers and young citizen scientists.
Tomorrow, they're the guardians of the Galápagos.