National Geographic EthnobotanY Encyclopedia

COMMUNITY TECH EDUCATOR & ENCYCLOPEDIA PLANT ILLUSTRATOR

Empowering Indigenous Communities for Forest Conservation. In 2022, I had the opportunity to work with the Kuna and Majé Embera indigenous communities through a National Geographic expedition across Panama, Central America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. This project focused on empowering indigenous leaders with the technological tools and knowledge necessary to protect and restore their lands, to achieve the goal of safeguarding 35,000 hectares of forest. My role involved training community leaders in the use of advanced tools like drones for environmental monitoring and conservation. Additionally, I collaborated on the research and illustration of an ethnobotanical encyclopedia, contributing to a resource that honors and preserves the communities’ ancestral plant knowledge.

Through this initiative, we fostered a collaborative approach, enabling these communities to use technology in a way that aligns with their cultural and environmental values. This project highlighted the importance of blending traditional knowledge with modern tools to address urgent conservation needs.