With the financial support of several foundations and organizations, including the Two Wings Foundation, the “Transforming Environment” project has reached its goal of planting 14,810 trees by December 2023. These trees were planted and cared for by the participants, tutors and coordination of the PAS program, as well as their families, leaders, educational institutions and community organizations in eight departments of the country.

The PAS program was developed by FUNDAEC and is a training for development. It is offered as non-formal education. FUNDAEC understands the term “education for development” as a process that enables young people to generate and apply knowledge as protagonists of progress in their communities. PSA is a program that equips young people with the necessary skills to become promoters of community well-being. For FUNDAEC, a promoter of the common good is an identity that the program seeks to promote and that can improve collaboration between people, regardless of their profession.

Goals of the project

The “Transforming the Environment” project aims to achieve several interlinked goals:

1. promoting reforestation and improving the ecological well-being of a region by

through the planting of trees, with a focus on the restoration of native species.

2. improving the food security of rural communities by promoting the planting of fruit trees as part of the community's diet.

3. facilitation of the PSA program in the implementation of collective projects that go beyond individual initiatives and a more organized and comprehensive approach to community projects.

4. to encourage communities to take systematic and collective action as part of a joint project, to promote the participation of several generations of community members and to encourage cooperation with a variety of groups and organizations.

5. establishing nurseries in communities to grow trees for local use, which will become both a resource for providing trees and a potential small business model for community members

The project, which was carried out in 85 communities in 8 departments of Colombia, involved 100 PAS groups with a total of 2186 people responsible for caring for the trees, most of whom are women. In addition, 58 organizations participated and collaborated, including community action boards, educational and governmental institutions.

Support from TwoWings in the north of Cali

One region that FUNDAEC focused on for financial support through Two Wings was the region north of Cali, which forms the central part of the Valle del Cauca department. In this process, FUNDAEC has built relationships with community leaders, educational institutions and municipal administrations to work on various service projects, and more recently the Transforming the Environment project. In 2023, the project conducted training workshops for about 40 people involved in the program to raise awareness about environmental conservation, tree planting, native species conservation and biodiversity. During the year, 15 planting actions were organized in eight communities near Tuluá and Río Frio, where 367 trees were planted and cared for by 66 individuals and members of the Community Action Boards.