At the end of 2020, we celebrated the Festival of Migratory Birds and Shorebirds of Venezuela, an online edition, produced by Avezona, together with people and institutions from all over America. This magnificent celebration had the goal of raising awareness of the migratory birds that visit Venezuela, and also making visible many of the monitoring and conservation efforts that are carried out throughout the continent to help birds.
With virtual interventions during the months of November and December, we were able to link to many initiatives focused on studying birds, engaging communities and working for the conservation of birds in America and the Caribbean. These 20-45 minute virtual interventions featured presenters who shared their experiences. We had international guests from Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, the US, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador and Argentina. We also featured national guests from different regions of Venezuela.
In these virtual interventions, topics of great interest were addressed, such as the integration of communities in the study and protection of shorebirds. In “The Birds of the Moon that Erase Borders and Link Communities” Patricia González and Mirta Carvajal shared their experiences as part of more than a decade of studying the migration of the Red Knot/ Calidris canutus. They also highlighted their experiences focused on engaging the communities of the San Antonio Bay, in Argentina.
We also had the participation of “Community Perspectives”, a group of independent community-based organizations presenting on “The Power of Communities in Science.” In this presentation we had the participation of Karen Purcell and Marilú López-Fretts from Celebrate Urban Birds; Berenice Rodríguez and Makeda Cheatom from the WorldBeat Cultural Center (WBC) in San Diego, California; and María Cecilia Álvarez Ricalde of the Green Jay Bird Conservancy, from Mexico. These organizations are dedicated to making communities historically excluded from science visible. They shared their perspectives on erasing the gap that separates communities from the sciences. They also focused on the importance of co-created ‘process’ based on equity, diversity and inclusion. Another great presentation was “Monitoring birds in Latin America: PROALAS and PAU Program (Urban Bird Program)” with the participation of Annamaria Savarino Drago and Daniela Souza López from Mexico.
Other activities included the raffle for “Guachipira goes on a trip,” a beautiful story, written by Arianna Arteaga-Quintero, a journalist, traveler and Venezuelan who tells the story of a traveling hummingbird, who walks through beautiful places in Venezuela in search of flowers for its family. A draw for Binoculars from the Instagram account, and a guide to the birds of Venezuela.
In this festival there was a storytelling event by UNOES (Union of Scenic Oral Narrators of Venezuela) in Video format. You can watch them on the following link:
A great collaboration with Tin Marín with the support of BirdsCaribbean, led to the creation of a puppet show “Sami, Sal y Arena.” This work addresses the problems faced by a family of Snowy Plovers (Charadrius nivosus) in the Isla de Coche salt mine, and how the community works together to protect this place and its birds. In addition, the work of “The Child and the Slingshot”, a story of the Yellow-shouldered Parrot (Amazona barbadensis), features the problem of looting nests and capturing birds for bird trafficking. These works in video format and can be found on Avezona’s social media networks.
Puppet invitation video: https://youtu.be/xy90PfsRAyw
Within the framework of the festival, we invited participants to explore their creativity through artistic expression. Below you can see some of the artwork shared by participants:
At total of 25 virtual interventions were presented and you can watch them on AveZona’s YouTube channel or Facebook page.
Article by Josmar Márquez