Fundación MERI: Three Years of Environmental Education and Ecotourism in Northern Patagonia

Between February 2017 and March 2020 I worked at Fundación MERI, in Melimoyu, Northern Patagonia. My institutionally documented title was Encargado de Gestión Administrativa y Social (Administrative and Social Management Officer), but in practice the role was cross-cutting: institutional management, environmental education, community engagement, ecotourism and content production, all woven into the same territory.

This article is, above all, a record. I want to put in writing which projects I was part of and how, with links that give context to each one, as a record of that stretch of my career.

Outreach in front of thousands: #SomosMar at Lollapalooza

On April 1 and 2, 2017, Fundación MERI set up an educational experience at Aldea Verde, inside Lollapalooza Chile. The activity connected the public with water, the marine ecosystems of Melimoyu and Chiloé, and Patagonian indigenous cultures, through underwater imagery, photographs, whale sounds and hands-on materials.

I was part of the team responsible for communicating this to children, young people and adults — my first experience of science communication in front of a mass audience, outside the usual field context. You can read more about the #SomosMar initiative on Fundación MERI’s site.

Environmental education in the field: Puerto Gala and Melimoyu

In April and May 2017, alongside Gloria Howes and Bryan Contreras, I co-led environmental education workshops with 15 students from Puerto Gala’s Madre de la Divina Providencia school and, later, with the Melimoyu community.

We covered the importance of Patagonian water, how freshwater ecosystems function, the relationships between rivers and fjords, cetaceans and how to identify them, local whale-watching experiences, and the conservation of Northern Patagonia. What we learned in those sessions later fed into an educational program built around each community’s own interests and knowledge. More on this work on Fundación MERI’s environmental education page.

School science: the Científico competition and Navegantes Camp

In June 2017 I was the institutional contact receiving submissions for Fundación MERI’s first school science competition, aimed at 5th–8th grade students from Chaitén, Quellón, Cisnes and Las Guaitecas. Teams could submit natural science, social science or technology-development projects related to conservation, glaciers, fjords, indigenous peoples, and connectivity in remote territories. Winners took part in Campamento Navegantes, held at the Melimoyu Natural Reserve itself.

The competition continued in later years under the same format — you can see a later edition on the foundation’s site.

A seat in the National Network of Environmental Education Centers

In June 2017, Fundación MERI joined Chile’s first National Network of Environmental Education Centers, launched by the Ministry of the Environment. Thirty-two organizations signed the commitment before the acting minister of the time, bringing the network to 44 centers nationwide. I represented and institutionally accompanied MERI at that launch. The Ministry of the Environment’s press release on the event is publicly available.

Mountain tourism and educational tourism for Melimoyu

Between 2017 and 2018, Fundación MERI opened calls to develop, through university theses, a management model for mountain tourism (centered on the trail to Melimoyu volcano) and a model for educational tourism at the reserve. The work had to cover SWOT analysis, safety, legal aspects, infrastructure, tour packages, logistics, local partnerships, and marketing and operations strategy.

I was the institutional contact who received those applications — a direct operational link to the reserve’s tourism development, though I wasn’t the author of the models or a thesis supervisor. The calls are still documented on the foundation’s site: ecotourism and science 2017 and invitation to apply with an ecotourism thesis.

Taking education out to sea: the Educational Navigation Route

The Educational Navigation Route: Patagonian Water was approved by Explora CONICYT for execution in 2018. It carried an environmental education program by sea to schools near the Melimoyu Natural Reserve and the Corcovado Gulf — territories reached mainly by water. It covered freshwater systems, organic matter in rivers, aquatic macroinvertebrates, invasive species, climate change, and the connection between mountains, glaciers, rivers, fjords and ocean.

In 2019 the program reached Puerto Gala, Raúl Marín Balmaceda, Repollal–Melinka and Castro. I was part of the project team, credited in its own credits and in those of the educational guide that came out of that route — the one described next. More context on the program on Fundación MERI’s environmental education page.

Co-author of the guide “Aguas Patagónicas: de la cordillera al mar”

Of everything above, this is the piece of work where my participation is most clearly credited. I was part of the guide’s team alongside Catalina Valencia, Gloria Howes, Gabriela Guzmán, Paulina Bahamonde and Marco Cifuentes, and I appear directly in the author list in several bibliographic records.

The guide was published by Fundación MERI in 2019 (ISBN 978-956-9834-05-9), and an English-language edition exists that carries the same credits. You can check the bibliographic record at Biblioteca Digital CIREN. I’d describe this as technical, science-communication co-authorship — not a peer-reviewed academic publication, which is a different standard.

Script for “Los Chono: Sabiduría Ancestral”

In 2020, the audiovisual studio El Viento produced, together with Fundación MERI, “Los Chono: Sabiduría Ancestral,” released that June. It tells the story of a girl who travels into the world of the Chono people and recognizes the continuity of her cultural heritage.

I co-wrote the script with Beatriz Buttazzoni, who also directed the piece and did part of the animation. The Chilean Association of Journalists and Professionals for Science Communication (ACHIPEC) documents this co-authorship in its article on El Viento. It was my first formal foray into script-writing for cultural heritage outreach.

What this stretch left me with

Between 2017 and 2020 I worked at the intersection of environmental education, conservation, local communities and ecotourism in Northern Patagonia. I helped design, coordinate and run outreach experiences about marine and freshwater ecosystems; co-led educational activities in Puerto Gala and Melimoyu; managed calls for school initiatives and tourism models at the Melimoyu Natural Reserve; was part of the Educational Navigation Route project; co-authored the didactic guide “Aguas Patagónicas: de la cordillera al mar”; and co-wrote the script for “Los Chono: Sabiduría Ancestral.”

That chapter formally ended in 2020, but a good part of what I do today — in ecotourism, nature photography, and projects that cross conservation with technology — traces back to these three years in Melimoyu.