Awards & Media
Quality of Life Improvement Award
We were awarded at the XXXI National Prize for Contributions to the Improvement of Quality of Life, organized by the National Council of Rectors (CONARE), the Ombudsman’s Office, and the 5 public universities of Costa Rica, with a special recognition from CONARE for empowering and mobilizing students, families, and educational centers with positive actions in favor of nature.
Guardians of Climate Recognition
We received a special mention in the Professional Development of Teachers category among 175 projects in Latin America, in the 2022 Climate Guardians Awards organized by UNICEF, UNESCO, and the Meri Foundation.
Green Latin America Awards
Guardians of Nature was chosen among the 10 best social and environmental projects in Latin America in the Human Development category.
Our general ranking: # 30 of the 500 best and of the 2733 projects that participated in 2019 competition.
The First Nature for Debt Swap
Guardians of Nature: environmental education and communication for sustainable development was selected to be financed by The First US-Costa Rica Debt for Nature Exchange in the 2018-2020 period, thanks to a strategic alliance with the regional media The Voice of Guanacaste
Media
DELFINO, July 20th, 2022
“My Guardian Challenge will award students and schools that promote environmental care
My Guardian Challenge 2022″ will take place for the fourth consecutive time, following previous collaborations where 300 children and their schools participated.
EL GUARDIAN. July 19th, 2022
“My Guardian Challenge will award students and schools that promote environmental care
On Monday, July 18th, the call opened for students between 4 and 15 years old to participate in a new edition of the “Mi Reto Guardián” contest. The initiative seeks to empower them as agents of change through challenges from home to promote care and respect for the planet. The registration period extends until September 18th.
EL GUARDIAN. July 19th 2022
“My Guardian Challenge” promotes ecological literacy.
Contest encourages children to take environmental actions from their homes.
Instilling environmental education in children from a young age is a valuable tool that empowers youth to be agents of change in the fight against the climate crisis.
UNDP. June 21, 2021.
“The planet calls upon its nature guardians.”.
Amber Agüero doesn’t wear a cape, but she is a heroine. Last year, she took on the challenge and became a Guardian of Nature. From her garden in Santa Marta de Hojancha in Guanacaste, she helps the planet. At 7 years old, she already knows how to compost and teaches others. One of them is her cousin, Blerd Villagra Zúñiga, who lives in Limón.
El Colectivo 506. March 17th, 2021.
‘I see our school as an innovation lab’.
In a discussion of how Costa Rican private schools can build bridges with public schools, Del Mar Academy and its co-founder, Jessica Sheffield, are a good place to start. Del Mar, located in the coastal community of Nosara, defines itself as “a living laboratory” for Movimiento Guardianes. This nonprofit project provides free environmental educational tools and resources to Latin American teachers and students, with more than 100 lessons now being used around the continent.
Voice of Guanacaste. December 23rd, 2020.
Guardian of Nature Award 2020 seeks to empower educators in the province of Guanacaste
For the first time, teachers and principals of schools and high schools throughout Guanacaste will be able to apply for the Guardians of Nature Award, which seeks to make visible those who have been promoting and inspiring an education for sustainable development throughout the province.
The Guardians of Nature movement wants to discover “principals and teachers who are proactive, innovative and leaders of a real impact in the search for environmental solutions for the conservation of natural resources in their schools and communities”, indicates the official announcement of the award.
Municipality of Nicoya. June 6th, 2020.
Municipality signs important cooperation agreement to improve the environmental education in the Nicoyan population.
The Municipality of Nicoya and Guardians of Nature Guardians signed a cooperation agreement in order to promote and develop good environmental practices in the Nicoyan population, through projects, campaigns and training that promote the protection of ecosystems throughout our canton and through education, mainly in the new generations.
AM Prensa. May 13th, 2020.
Boys and girls take on the challenge of becoming guardians of nature
No action is small. You are not too small to change the world either. That is the lesson that more than 300 boys and girls gave when they embraced the challenge of becoming guardians of nature.
“My guardian challenge” is an initiative that invited children between the ages of 4 and 12 to show “their creativity and active participation with a view to taking concrete actions to transform their home, our country and, at the same time, contribute to meeting the United Nations sustainable development goals ”.
AM Prensa. May 13th, 2020.
300 children from all over the country create ingenious projects to protect the environment
Approximately 300 students from all over the country create ingenious projects that seek to leave a mark for the protection of the environment.
«My Guardian Challenge», is an initiative supported by the Ministry of Public Education (MEP) of Costa Rica.
La Republica. May 8th, 2020.
Nature and economy
The local and global economy is carried out in the biosphere, the space of land, water and air where life develops. The biosphere is our main asset. It is the natural capital from which we received our well-being. Paradoxically, that biosphere which makes possible the creation of goods and services, and the development of the economy, is not taken into account in economic systems.
Voice of Guanacaste. May 5th, 2020.
Your children can be guardians of nature during this quarantine
My Guardian Challenge was born in the province of Guanacaste in 2019. Last year, 200 students from primary school participated, carrying out all kinds of actions to lend a hand to the environment. With the crisis of COVID-19 we decided to launch the initiative at the national level and thus motivate, make visible and reward the positive impact of girls and boys during quarantine from their own homes.
Radio Show 107.1. April 25th, 2020.
How to achieve a planet where girls, boys and teachers become guardians of our natural resources?
The national director of the Alliance for Rivers and Watersheds of Costa Rica, Roberto de la Ossa, interviews our Founder and Executive Director Jessica Sheffield Zamora and the Coordinator of Guardians of Nature for Nosara Andrea Víquez Benavides about the Guardians of Nature initiative.
Voice of Guanacaste, March 12, 2020.
Four Guanacaste Educators Recognized as Environmental Guardians
Flor Matarrita’s history with environmental protection goes back decades. Since she was a child, she has dedicated her life to reforesting trees in the province and she has transmitted that passion, as she describes it, to many generations of students as a “debt to the planet.” Those efforts over the years made her deserving of the 2019 Nature Guardian Teacher Award.
According to the founder of Guardians of Nature, Jessica Sheffield, the award is designed to promote more environmental actions within schools. The award is open to the school districts of Nicoya center, Hojancha center and Nosara, the circuits where the environmental project has an impact.
Ministry of Public Education, August 9, 2019.
MEP and Guardians of Nature Foundation will enhance environmental sustainability in education centers.
In order to promote projects and initiatives for Education for Sustainable Development, the Ministry of Public Education (MEP) and the Guardians of Nature Foundation signed an agreement that empowers joint work.
The agreement is specified in the framework of cooperation and collaboration between both parties, with the purpose of developing actions that promote the development of a socio-environmental culture, to consolidate sustainability, adaptation to climate change and biodiversity conservation, as established in the MEP Educational Policy.
La Voz de Guanacaste, July 5, 2019.
Guardians of Nature is one of the best environmental projects in Latin America.
This category recognizes projects that promote gender equality, poverty reduction, job creation, among other aspects related to social issues, according to the organization’s website.
“We are very involved with rural and marginal schools. We work with all kinds of children and teachers without absolutely excluding anyone; in this aspect we are an inclusive and integral initiative, ” said Sheffield.
La Voz de Guanacaste, June 26, 2019.
Protected areas serve as laboratories for educational center in Guanacaste.
“I learned that out of every 1,000 turtles that are born, only one survives,” said Erika, a fifth-grade student at La Esperanza School, at the end of the first experimental tour organized by the Guardians of Nature project.
The biologist and creator of Guardians of Nature, Jessica Sheffield, said that These tours are looking to take benefit from the country’s protected areas as learnign laboratories.
“The idea is for children to learn outside the classroom, providing them with the personal experience of being physically present in our protected areas. It is the best we way to achieve that educational goal,” Sheffield explained.
El Guacho, June 17, 2019.
Belen children become Guardians of Nature.
Jessica Sheffield Zamora, a former resident of Belen, Heredia led the workshop that revolved around the history of plastic. She explained how plastics travel from cities to the sea, how animals ingest it, what is a microplastic and what are its effects.
Students, both first and second cycle, will have to share the story with a member of their families.
Jeesica, the founder and Executive Director of the Guardians of Nature movement told her audience, “The stories we tell in the workshop have the concept of the Dalai Lama who said:” If you think you are too small to make a difference, try to sleep with a mosquito. “
The Republic, May 15, 2019.
Ecolones y Fundación del Mar create a free environmental education tool.
Material addresses curriculum of the Ministry of Public Education
“In the plataform Guardians of Nature, all the material we have done is linked to the curriculum of the Ministry of Public Education, and contains a varied environmental theme, ” said Jéssica Sheffield, creator of the page.”
La Voz de Guanacaste, May 24, 2019.
All schools can teach environmental education with this hands on tool.
Content based on a real experience
The publications are adapted to the curriculum of the Ministry of Public Education and address a broad spectrum of topics that include water resources, energy, waste management, biodiversity, climate change, health, nature at risk, education for emotional intelligence and environmental dates.
Summa Magazine, April 24, 2019.
Costa Rica: educators will have free access to powerful environmental educational tools.
Platform is designed for teachers and students from urban and rural areas to build their own environmental knowledge from their particular experience.
Today Earth Day we celebrate a new alliance between the ecolones® program and the Fundación del Mar that will give access to the free environmental education tool Guardians of Nature.
As described by its creator Jéssica Sheffield, the “Movement of Children Guardians of Nature” is a technological tool, an environmental education model for Latin America, made “with a lot of love”. In this project she has turned her passion for conservation, her vocation for teaching, her hope in younger generations and her faith in educators who believe in the ability of her profession to generate positive changes in society.
La Voz de Guanacaste, October 3, 2019.
Hoajancha’s teacher planted more than 100 trees and maintains them with organic waste from the dining room.
“In Hojancha, Matarrita and her students are already guardians of nature. Every year, children visit the neighbor’s farm to see how their trees are, help in their maintenance and enjoy the fruits of their work.”
“The project is possible thanks to a scholarship whose funds come from the Primer First Excahnge of the Debt for Nature EE.UU-CR, and is led by the environmental education program Guardianes de la Naturaleza and La Voz de Guanacaste. “
La Nación, September 29, 2018
Yoga classes and storytelling put the final note to the SEE Sustainability Congress 2018.
“The little ones also had a special space, in charge of marine biologist and environmental educator Jessica Sheffield, who read to the children her story entitled ‘The guardian of nature and her friends save the river’.
“Many of the problems of sustainable human development are solved with a fundamental solution, that is, early environmental education during childhood when they enter the school system,” said the writer.
La Voz de Guanacaste, June 5, 2018
2000 children from Nicoya and Hojancha will learn to keep nature.
“This is an opportunity for more children and teachers to strengthen environmental education in their classrooms. We want Guardians of Nature to be a Latin American model of sustainable human development, through environmental education since childhood,” said the biologist and creator of the Guardians of Nature program, Jessica Sheffield. “
El Guacho newspaper, November 5, 2017
Belen woman wants schoolchildren to become “Guardians of Nature”.
This biologist said that the impact achieved among the Guanacastecan infants has been incredible, “I have very beautiful examples, a child told the mother that he was a nature guardian and told the grandmother that he could not throw the garbage in the river, ”he revealed.
“Environmental education is key to generating changes, a child guardian will not litter, will consume less, learn to reduce waste, no doubt it all starts with education,” said Sheffield. “
La Voz de Guancaste, September 23, 2017
Guanacaste children will learn to take care of the environment with this new, free book.
“The Guardians of Nature and her Friends” tells the adventures of Lucia, a girl who loves nature and wants to protect it. As the story unfolds, the children of Guanacaste learn about recycling, caring for natural resources, and environmental values. About 2,500 copies will be allocated for free and delivered to schoolchildren throughout Guanacaste. Jessica Sheffield, biologist and author of the story, said that her wish is that through her stories, children will be empowered to become guardians of the planet.
Repretel, Canal 6.August 28, 2017
Book for children about recycling launched.
Interview with Jessica Sheffield Zamora during her launch of the book La Guardiana de la Naturaleza and her friends save the river during the International Book Fair in San José Costa Rica in August 2017.
La Nación, August 28, 2017
Children become guardians of nature, thanks to a story.
“That’s the story behind Nature’s Guardian and her friends save the river, story written by Jessica Sheffield and illustrated by Shannon McWhirter. This is supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and seeks to inspire rural school children to take care of their natural resources.
“For cultural reasons and the difficult access to children’s literature in rural areas, it could be the first illustrated story in the home of many families, which has immense potential to transform the worldview of these new generations,” said Sheffield. ” .