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Travel-to-Honduras.com
Coral Cay Conservation Project Bay Islands
Volunteers |
Coral Cay Conservation (CCC) is a non-profit organization at
the cutting edge of ecotourism that sends teams of volunteers
to survey some of the world’s most endangered coral reefs
and tropical forests. Their mission is to ‘provide resources
to help sustain livelihoods and alleviate poverty through the
protection, restoration and management of coral reefs and tropical
forests’. They achieve these aims by; providing technical
and financial support that countries need in order to produce
conservation management plans for threatened reefs and forests;
training international volunteers and host-country partners
to gather, interpret and monitor the data that’s so crucial
for effective conservation; working with host-country governments
and other organizations to encourage education and sustainable
livelihood opportunities in local communities.
Since 1998, over 1,000 British CCC volunteers have worked
in close partnership with ‘Programa Manejo Ambiental
Islas de la Bahia’ (PMAIB), Universidad Nacional Autónoma
de Honduras (UNAH), the Bay Islands Conservation Association
(BICA) and local communities, to help protect the vitally
important but threatened coral reefs of the Bay Islands of
Honduras.
In March 2003, CCC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with
the Honduran Ministry of Tourism for collaboration with (PMAIB).
This event coincided with the launch of the ‘CCC Scholarship
Awards’ in partnership with (UNAH).
The ‘CCC Scholarship Awards’ provide extensive
and comprehensive conservation education and training opportunities
for Honduran citizens, in support of an international initiative
to conserve the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef ecosystem, a vast
and inter-connected ‘biodiversity corridor’ of coral
reefs, stretching for over 700km northwards from Honduras
into the heart of the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.
Volunteers with local children |
Up to 100 ‘CCC Scholarship Awards’ have been made
available to any suitable Honduran citizen wishing to make
an active contribution towards the protection and sustainable
use of coral reefs in Honduras. Two types of Awards are available:
‘CCC Reef Awareness Awards’
These short scholarship courses will provide training in both
SCUBA diving (to PADI ‘Advanced Open Water Diver’
certification) and in general reef awareness and appreciation.
Training schedules are designed to be highly flexible and
tailored to the needs and availability of persons concerned,
allowing recipients who, for example, might be in full-time
employment and can therefore only spare a few weekends to
participate.
‘CCC Reef Conservation Awards’
These four-week intensive residential scholarship courses
are aimed primarily at Hondurans wishing not only to obtain
SCUBA training certification, but also certification under
the ‘CCC Skills Development Training Programme’.
These awards are ideal for Honduran citizens who can dedicate
at least four weeks of their time to intensive training and
who plan to use this training to make an active and effective
contribution to the conservation of Honduran coral reefs.
University undergraduates are particularly welcome to apply.
For more information on how you can get involved please visit
the Coral Cay website
Courtesy of Coral Cay Conservation
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