The Clubes Ecológicos Aula Viva works with children and young adults in the Intag and Guayllabamba River watersheds.​​

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The goal of this project is to forge future environmental leaders through:

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• Field trips to ecologically important areas of Ecuador

• Water quality monitoring of the Intag River watershed

• Bird and plant identification

• Medicinal plant use

• Understanding the cloud forest ecosystem and hydrological cycle

• Understanding the connection between and intact ecosystem and food and water security

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In 2019 CASA founded the Club Ecológico Toabunchi as a way to promote environmental education amongst the children of Pucará and Santa Rosa in the Intag River Valley. Local children rarely understand or appreciate the extreme biodiversity that surrounds them. Our goal was to help local youth understand the importance of these megadiverse forests to the world, and long term sustainable economic activity.

 

We started with outings: visiting the forests, waterfalls, rivers, and mountains of our home territory. We then started explaining how the cloud forest ecosystem works and articulating the connection between intact forests, water security, and food security. This process was followed by workshops helping the kids identify the flora and fauna of our forests. Finally, we implemented a water quality monitoring program where the children have learned to interpret results for nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, phosphates, pH, and fecal coliform counts to identify point sources of pollution.

 

Our program was so successful that by 2025 we expanded it to incorporate nine more clubs –18 in total, each one representing a river within the macro-watershed of the Intag River Valley. We organized the new clubs with help from the Watershed Council of the Area de Conservación y Uso Sostenible Intag-Toisan, the organizing body of our local conservation area.

 

Plans for the future included systemizing the water quality information into a common-source data base, the purchase of ponchos, boots, T-shirts, and med kits for the clubs, ongoing financing of transportation and food costs for the outings, and ongoing environmental education workshops for the guides.

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