In May, I visited Guardianas del Estuario, The Iris Project’s 2024 Seed Prize Winner, as part of the mentorship and follow-up to understand and identify how to better support the project. This allowed me to meet Jabel in person—the young woman behind this initiative that keeps growing and delivering results for capacity-building, research, and gender-focused conservation.
Jabel works in Sipacate, a coastal community on the Pacific Coast of the Escuintla Department in Guatemala. Guardianas del Estuario is located at the Sipacate-Naranjo National Park. The park encompasses mangrove forests, lagoons, and sandy beaches, covering an area 20 km long and 1 km wide, stretching between the coastal towns of Sipacate and El Naranjo. Guardianas del Estuario’s primary focus is working with mollusks.
The project has been collecting data for over a year now. Parallel to this research, Jabel has also supported local schools in competing for funding programs and new technologies—things they otherwise wouldn’t pursue due to lack of resources, time, and capacity.
Seeing how this project has impacted so many people reinforced why flexible funding, combined with relationships built on trust, is important for youth-led projects. She is doing more than what she stated she would do: I saw children from the school—who also must work in salt extraction on the coast—their faces lighting up when they saw her and asking if they could join our field trip through the mangrove (and they did, sharing so much wisdom with me, including how to identify different birds and the types of mangrove that one can find there!). Some of them had minor injuries from the work, which is pretty common given the socioeconomic context, and very painful to see.
However, her involvement with these kids has at least brought a ray of light to these conditions: she has organised field trips for bird watching, activities at the school to learn about environmental problems and conservation, and has also engaged them in activities to develop their skills and support the understaffed school in creating an edible garden with plants and vegetables that students can also take to their homes. All of this may not be directly related to what she told us she would do, but honestly, it made me realise the importance of flexible funding, the constant exercise of trust and community building, and the possibilities when you give a young person a chance.
What moved me most was observing how Jabel approaches the intersection of science and community. “Community > Science,” she told me, explaining that data should serve people, not the other way around. She’s teaching these women that they are citizen scientists.
What she is trying to build is a legacy of behavioural and cultural change: conservation that transforms not just ecosystems, but the people who depend on them.
This visit was an opportunity to connect in person after countless online sessions, and it was remarkable to see how we were shaping future initiatives over dinner, afternoon snacks, or even while walking through her university campus where she’s pursuing her master’s degree. But more than that, it was a reminder that when we trust young people with flexible funding and genuine support, they don’t just meet their own expectations—they exceed them in ways we never imagined.
Jabel is proving that the most powerful conservation happens when science serves community, when local knowledge is valued alongside academic research, and when a young woman’s determination to protect her home creates ripple effects that touch children’s dreams, women’s livelihoods, and an entire ecosystem’s future. This is what transformative funding looks like: not just supporting a project, but nurturing a movement that will outlast any single grant or initiative.
