Belize: Sustainable Action for Coastal Communities & Ocean Conservation

The GREEN Belize Program is a 66+ hour intensive program that takes a local, place-based approach, and utilizes experiential learning, service-learning, professional development, and intercultural learning components in Belize. On this 10-day travel program, participants learned from a speaker series of industry experts who are leading local, community-based initiatives around the intersections of SDGs #13 Climate Action, #14 Life on Land, and #15 Life Below Water. The speaker series shared local approaches to ocean conservation, current challenges in marine resources, coral reef restoration, the coexistence between life on land and life underwater, and social entrepreneurship. In conjunction with the speaker series, students worked alongside various local community organizations and participated in citizen science, learned about marine ecology, and supported conservation and stewardship of the Belize Barrier Reef. Throughout the program, students worked in interdisciplinary groups to complete a Capstone Project that provided an innovative solution to a real-world sustainability challenge around SDGs #13, #14, and/or #15. Students used a systems-thinking approach and considered the financial, engineering, environmental, and social impact aspects of their idea and detailed these aspects in their presentations.