July 14 – Ms. Isabel Goodall of Ollei, Ngarchelong presents $500.00 check from Remengesau2 Foundation to Ms. Ann Singeo of Camp Ebiil in support of their exceptional summer camp program with kids to strengthen awareness, research, and conservation programs to ensure a sustainable future for our marine and land resources for generations to come.
Camp Ebiil hosted a Presidential Cabinet meeting on July 6 where Campers presented to the President and his Cabinet on what they learned about Fisheries, Forestry, Sustainable Tourism, and Marine Protected Areas.
Camp Ebiil was created in 2005 in a response to the environmental challenges faced by Palau’s natural resources under threat from over harvesting and other unsustainable practices. While governments and environmental protection agencies rush to develop policies and plans to protect the natural resources, the smaller communities struggle to accept this new concept while surviving on the very resources faced by these emerging environmental challenges. In planning and developing of the camp’s learning objectives, it became clear that many, if not all, of the indigenous knowledge and practices integrated processes that embraced environmental protection and conservation values and principles.
Camp Ebiil has evolved in this very ideology of teaching environmental protection through cultural practices that respect “mother nature,” promoting peaceful actions – a way of life. It is Ebiil Society’s belief that knowledge and appreciation of one’s roots increases a sense of ethnic pride that will promote protection of one’s identity and heritage. The program’s goal is to plant the seeds of knowledge to bring forth the Palauan wisdom. The motto of Camp Ebiil is: “My Land, my Water, my Home. May I be as good and beautiful to you as you have been to me.”