While waiting for her group to begin painting the pole in front of Guma Sakman in Susupe, Anastacia Minor started sharing her insights on nature and its interconnectedness, the importance of taking care of our environment, and on what she thinks officials should do to ensure that even generations after her would have a place to call home.

Minor, from ChaCha Ocean View Middle School, is one of the 12 students participating in this year’s Project HOPE (Healthy Oceans and People Empowerment) a no-cost ocean science program of the Friends of the Mariana Trench, aimed at cultivating 30 new indigenous ocean/marine scientists by 2030.

“When you take away one thing, you’re not just taking away something, you’re taking away the whole. The whole thing is going to fall apart like a puzzle. That’s why it’s really important to keep [our environment] clean, to help it so it can grow more, so that the next generation can also expand, travel, and tell people about how [home] is like,” she added.

Minor particularly stressed how important it is to take care of the ocean given its “trauma” from ships and oil spills, and from people throwing trash. She appealed to officials to “work on people who are not taking care” of the environment, those who are harming home.

“Show them what they’re doing to our environment because if they don’t, they’re just [going to] keep going and going. The environment, it’s getting destroyed all over by the people who are not taking care of our environment.”

Saipan Tribune went to observe Project HOPE’s session last Monday, June 7, where Minor with other students, were learning about sea urchins from David Benavente of the Micronesia Islands Nature Alliance. At the session, ocean elder Frances Sablan also shared her knowledge on how sea urchins were traditionally used for chunking by the islands’ fishermen.

Project HOPE marries scientific with cultural knowledge, through experiential learning, where students get to know about the oceans, climate change, coral reef life, marine protected areas, mangrove trees, currents and tides, among many others.

Our ocean is threatened

To spread awareness on ocean conservation, the students helped paint two Project Haligi poles nearest Guma Sakman, under the guidance of Project HOPE’s interns, who are members of the Northern Marianas College’s Environment and Natural Resources Organization.

One pole was painted with endangered/threatened ocean species in the CNMI, and the other, painted with food fishes on island. Tina Marie Kaneshi, also a student of ChaCha Ocean View, got assigned to paint the latter.

Kaneshi shared with Saipan Tribune her frustrations whenever she would see other children littering in the ocean. “How many times I’ve seen a kid litter in the ocean and just leave their trash there. It disgusts me. You should pick up your trash. It sucks to just see all the candy wrappers and favors from fiestas in there. They just leave the trash in there and I hate that.”

“The environment and the ocean… it’s an important thing. It supports most life here, supports the economy as well. Its health has been declining more and more, and if it just keeps declining, it’s going to die out and all that past knowledge, all that’s in there – all the fish, all the jobs that are about the ocean, it’s going to go down,” she added.

Rochelle Ramon, one of Project HOPE’s interns, spearheaded the painting project so the students can help spread ocean conservation awareness, stressing the importance of the ocean to the community, in terms of coastal protection, food, even to the oxygen that we all breathe.

“We focus on ocean conservation. It is an important project we can move forward with, especially with the kids, just to have them learn more and become more ocean conservative too, right now and in the future, as they’re our future generations.”

"The best of both worlds"

Through Project HOPE, the students get scientific information from environmental experts, and life and cultural knowledge from ocean elders.

For ocean elder Frances Sablan, the youth get the best of both worlds through Project HOPE. The students do not just know about the theories and the scientific, but they also get to know the culture, which makes ocean learning more relatable and relevant to them and their lives.

“If we don’t impart to them the knowledge and the values, then they will not protect [our environment], they won’t conserve, they will just treat it as if it is unimportant. So, by teaching them, hopefully they would realize the value, and why they need to be the protectors and the conservationists,” Sablan said.

“I can relate back when I was their age, by going out and helping clean the environment, by collecting bottles or trash along the road, it made me a firm believer that I need to help clean my environment. And I get upset with anyone who trashes it because I experienced a hardship.”

Sablan added that this is the kind of sentiment that she wants to pass on to the youth, to have them realize that by being participatory on how to take care of and be stewards of the land and the ocean, that they really would be active participants, and active movers and shakers.

Hopwood Middle School’s Jose Iguel, also a Project HOPE participant, echoes this. For Iguel, what the P

roject is doing is important, stating that “if you learn when you’re young, when you get older, that information becomes useful.”

What is being learned by the students through Project HOPE could also prove useful to everyone else in the community, and for Sablan, this is particularly true to those who trash, do negative things, and have a carefree attitude on the island.

“They need to also join in,” Sablan said. “They also need to be part of the process, because they’re the ones that really need to take home the knowledge and the wisdom, and the values. It is important… There is hope. There’s a lot of factors that will pull us down in the environment but with this [Project HOPE], and with others that also support the idea and concept, there is [hope].”

To learn more about Project HOPE, and other programs of the Friends of the Mariana Trench, call (670) 483-FOMT (3668), or email info@friendsmarianatrench.org.

Seventeen students from Tanapag Middle School and Dandan Middle School had just successfully completed, this Fall semester, their ocean-science journey with Project HOPE (Healthy Oceans & People Empowerment), where they learned about the ocean and its marine life, the policies that protect them, and really, just how important a role the ocean plays for the island’s present and future generations.

Project HOPE is a no-cost ocean science program created by Friends of the Mariana Trench, under a grant from the Administration of Native Americans, and their goal—to cultivate 30 new indigenous ocean/marine scientists by 2030.

Saipan Tribune sat down with Joe Villacrusis, FOMT project coordinator, to learn more about Project HOPE, and go deep into this very significant educational undertaking.

“We would like to develop an interest in these children to become ocean stewards and/or become ocean scientists. We also want them to know and understand the culture surrounding our oceans and the traditional practices from our ocean elders so that they can make the connection with that and science,” Villacrusis shared.

“This will greatly benefit the community because we are nurturing and developing these young minds to become more aware of how important our ocean is to not just for our culture and community, but also for many generations to come,” he added.

Through Project HOPE’s experiential learning, young minds get molded into becoming more aware and protecting of the environment, particularly of the ocean.

Right now, for 2021, they are rounding up new 6th graders to add to those who already pre-registered from the Fall. “Recruiting starts now through approximately Feb. 14. We are going to hold learning sessions from mid to late February lasting through early June.”

Cultivating new marine scientists

FOMT’s strategic focus, from 2019 up until 2024, is on creating educational pathways that support the cultivation of 30 new indigenous ocean/marine scientists by 2030.

“The FOMT founding members always envisioned that we could help support education pathways to ocean and marine science degrees for our local citizens. We also saw the opportunity for citizen scientists to help with research projects for our community.”

In 2017, FOMT held its first Open ROV (remote-operated vehicles) robotics building workshops—two intensive trainer’s training workshops, where those trained were taught to teach students on how to construct, maintain, and operate underwater remote operated vehicles, to formal and informal researchers, citizen scientists, junior high, high school and college students.

“Project HOPE is our second big adventure in pursuing our goals to help with increasing ocean and marine science education in the CNMI,” Villacrusis said.

For two years, from 2018 to 2019, FOMT brainstormed with members of the community, to create a structure that would achieve the goal of cultivating new marine scientists on island. They looked at enrollment at the Northern Marianas College to see how many students were participating in the Natural Resources Management Program and tried to determine how many of them are actually interested in marine science.

FOMT’s research on how to increase the number of students seeking marine science degrees led them to examining the current ACT Aspire test scores for middle school students, and then discussing the importance of 6th grader-aptitude with PSS teachers and curriculum professionals.

Villacrusis added that, inspired by the desire to improve sixth grader’s ACT aspire test scores, Project HOPE got designed to use experiential learning to help CNMI students understand experimental results, inferences, models and data.

From there, they reached out to some of the island’s ocean elders to ask for guidance on how to blend traditional practices with the STEM principle learning taught in most formal education environments, as well as inquired with marine science professionals on how to best structure their approach.

This resulted to a multi-tiered approach, Project HOPE being just the first step.

“There are three more projects we are developing that work together with Project HOPE, which will target other age groups—3rd, 9th, and 12th grades. We are also being inclusive and sensitive to other projects already underway so that our efforts will enhance work that is already in progress.”

What students can learn

“HOPE is also an ocean conservation program that allows sixth graders, college students, and experienced ocean experts to join forces in protecting their home. Project HOPE is the sun of FOMT’s universe and we are building everything else around it.”

Last Fall 2020 semester, with active involvement from five Ocean Elders and seven NMC ENRO Club members, Project HOPE students learned about the following: Introduction to Oceans, Currents/Tides, Water Cycle, Climate Change, Coral Reef Life, Coral Bleaching, Marine Protected Areas, The Marianas Trench, Bays & Estuaries, Upwelling Zones, Open Ocean, Mangrove Trees, swimming, rope tying, and even dissecting sea urchins.

“The topics below were chosen because it was aligned with some of the conceptual and aptitude questions in science from the ACT Aspire Assessment given to students in the CNMI Public School System especially at the middle school level,” Villacrusis explained.

“… So not only are we providing these children with knowledge about the ocean, we are also teaching them how to apply this knowledge to get better scores in their assessment in science.”

For this year, 2021, sessions will be similar to those held in the Fall, but with improvements based on what FOMT learned from Project HOPE’s pilot session.

The semester will wrap up with an Ocean Camp mid to late June, based on the last days of the Public School System’s school calendar.

Hope for the future

Project HOPE began in late 2019, with the awarding of the ANA grant. The ANA grant is funded through September 2022, but as early as now, strategies are already being built by FOMT to continue the program via alternate resources once the ANA grant ends.

Aside from children learning about the ocean, its marine life, and how to protect them, Project HOPE can also open opportunities for the college to offer more science programs, and subsequently, open more jobs and attract different scientists from around the world to study our surrounding ocean, especially the Marianas Trench.

“The first thing we want the community to know is to get the facts about the ocean, the marine life it supports, and how it serves humans as a whole. Once they understand how important the ocean is to us, they will better understand why it is critical to protect it. Human behavior has the greatest impact on the ocean,” Villacrusis stressed.

“How we live our lives can directly and indirectly affect the ocean. So every little action such as picking up after ourselves and practicing a more sustainable lifestyle can add up if everyone does their part and takes responsibility for our environment.”

To register for, or learn more about Project HOPE, as well as other programs of the Friends of the Mariana Trench, call (670) 483-FOMT (3668), or email info@friendsmarianatrench.org.