Educating the Next Generation of Marine Conservation Leaders!

The Junior Sea Guardian Project (JSGP) aims to instill a conservation mindset in learners, their families, teachers, and community stakeholders by emphasizing the importance of coastal and marine resources. It is an awareness and education program for elementary schools in coastal areas, using the marine conservation book In Tropical Seas (ITS), with its Filipino version Sa Tropikal na Karagatan, together with a comprehensive Teacher’s Activities Guide (TAG).

Goals

• To increase the number of knowledgeable learners, teachers, and stakeholders about tropical coastal marine life and why conservation is vital for food security and livelihood.
• To build capacity of coastal elementary schools and communities through an experiential extracurricular program to influence children who are key opinion leaders in their families and, as they mature, eventually leaders in their community.
• The program hopes to build momentum as a movement which will end when DepEd incorporates the basic principles and learning materials of the program in the regular school curriculum.

Expected Outcomes

• Increased awareness of marine conservation’s role in food security and livelihoods among learners and school communities.
• Enhanced capacity of DepEd teachers to implement Sea Guardian conservation activities.
• Established social media groups for teachers to exchange lessons learned and best practices.
• Documented proof of concept to support DepEd in integrating marine conservation into the regular curriculum.
• Compiled success stories to aid in securing donor support for program expansion.

Core Activities

• Teacher training and mentoring
• Classroom integration of Sa Tropikal na Karagatan book and teacher’s activity guide
• Student-led creative outputs and environmental campaigns
• Community engagement through family participation and public sharing
• Monitoring and documentation for learning and policy influence