Our partnership with AMBAS began in 2016, when our Interim Executive Director, Ana Luisa Moran Ahern visited Barra de Santiago and met some of the women of AMBAS, including Doña Rosa Aguilar. There are many leaders in AMBAS that we admire, but Doña Rosa, who is the protagonist of a recent film, “Treasures from the Tides,” that we produced in partnership with Catherine Brookes and BBC, is a cachimbona on another level. She started the organization 20 plus years ago when gender roles were even more unequal than they are now and women were not leaders in their communities, much less did they start their own NGOs. She persevered through tough times and has made AMBAS a nationally recognized and internationally admired organization that creates real impact in the lives of the people in her community and the environment around her.

I was so impressed and inspired by her story and the conservation work AMBAS is doing, and I wanted EcoViva to partner with them and find ways to support their initiatives. – Ana Luisa Moran Ahern, Interim Executive Director

AMBAS is a women-led conservation organization in a male-dominated society. Many of the members’ husbands were very unhappy with them for participating in the work – they were expected to stay in the home cooking and caring for children. Rosa’s own husband threatened to leave her because of it, and one member’s husband did leave her after she joined. A few years later, after she became a member of the board of AMBAS and began to gain recognition from the community, he begged her to take him back – and she refused!

Last year, AMBAS did not receive government funding for their sea turtle conservation hatchery. For a moment, it seemed that they would be unable to open the hatchery. However, our partnership led to a new grant from Lush Cosmetics in September and they were able to open the hatchery just in time for a record number of female sea turtles to come ashore and nest!

Your support makes partnerships possible. Your gift can help us maintain funding for programs like the sea turtle hatchery run by women leaders in El Salvador. Make a gift to our year-end campaign and invest in the future of climate resistance.