Our Awesome On the Water Project is a summer camp for kids to engage with river conservation by learning how to play and build traditional Andean wind instruments, like the sukus fuyu or the pallas, which are made from carrizos, a type of reed that grows in river beds.

Sadly, rivers are losing water, which not only affects our wildlife, habitat, and production, but also our music. If our rivers are not healthy, our flutes sound empty and out of tune. If the carrizos do no grow big and strong, we cannot create the flutes and the tunes of our ancestors risk being lost.

In addition to learning how to build and play the andean flutes, we will also have activities to protect our watersheds. One of the activities is to plant native trees and bushes in critical points. We have an alliance with a local plant nursery which will provide us with native plants and technical asistance.

Last year, we were able to launch a small pilot project with 10 people and it was very successful. The link to the video was posted in the page of a local NGO called FUCAE and is shared with you in this application. The pilot project proved to us there is interest in participating. With your help, we want to increase the number of participants and reach more communities. In our area, most parents work long hours in the flower industries and when they are not in school the kids are left home alone. This summer camp provides a fun and educational alternative.

As the famous Baba Diuom stated in 1967 "In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught". Nowadays kids are used to playing with plastic toys and cellphones waiting for their parents to buy from a store. We have had a disconnect from nature and forgotten many of the joys and uses our ecosystems provide us. Our awesome project aims to reconnect kids with nature and teach them about the importance of water conservation through music and play.