The first trip to the Chilí páramo
Environmental education in the ecosystem that gives us our name — the Future Nexus milestone that took Pijao's young people to meet the origin of their water.
Many of Pijao’s young people live their whole lives a few hours from the páramo without ever setting foot on it. They know the water that comes down — the stream, the village aqueduct — but not the silent place where it is born.
That is why the first environmental education trip to the Chilí páramo, organised by the Future Nexus programme, was much more than a field trip: it was an encounter with the origin.
At almost four thousand metres, in the mist, the students walked for the first time among frailejones — the plants that give our Foundation its name. They saw with their own eyes what until then had been a drawing in a workbook: woolly leaves capturing moisture from the mist, spongy soil storing water, the silence of an ecosystem that has been working slowly for thousands of years.
Up there, conservation stops being a lesson and becomes a personal experience. It is hard not to care for what you know; it is nearly impossible not to love what has taken your breath away.
The conservation workshops that followed the trip were sown in fertile ground. And one conviction was confirmed for us: the best environmental classroom in Quindío has no walls — it has frailejones.