All About PROBEA

What does PROBEA stand for?
PROBEA is the Spanish acronym for Proyecto Bio-regional de Educación Ambiental, which means Bio-regional Environmental Education Project.

What is PROBEA?
PROBEA was initially a collaboration of 10 organizations—five from each side of the US/Mexico border. We share the same bio-region, the Tijuana River Watershed. Our motto is “Neighboring communities in harmony with nature through environmental education”.

When was PROBEA founded?
PROBEA was founded in 1991 by the Daedalus Alliance for Environmental Education (DAEE).

How was PROBEA founded?
DAEE and several other Southern California and Northern Baja California organizations were working on environmental issues on their own. They collaborated in a two-year planning process that led to a shared vision: an environmentally literate citizenry working together to improve the quality of life in their communities.

Why is PROBEA a part of the San Diego Natural History Museum?
In 1997 DAEE merged into the San Diego Natural History Museum, and PROBEA became the Museum’s binational education program. PROBEA has maintained its original mission and most of its original staff. In addition, PROBEA continues to generate its own funding. PROBEA’s efforts to educate teachers, foster community involvement and increase support of environmental education now enhance the Museum’s mission, as well as its own. PROBEA'S efforts south of the border echo the Museum's efforts in San Diego County.

Why are PROBEA programs carried out in Baja California and in the states bordering the Sea of Cortés?
The Museum's natural history region encompasses the area between Point Conception, just north of Santa Barbara in California, to Cabo San Lucas on the southern tip of Baja California Sur and all of the Sea of Cortés.

What does PROBEA do?
Education is an effective tool to combat those forces that threaten our environment. With that in mind, PROBEA builds environmental knowledge, awareness and skills in the citizenry of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora and Sinaloa. To accomplish this, PROBEA creates curriculum and facilitates workshops for educators and nongovernmental organizations. Each PROBEA participant is asked to commit to leading his or her audience—students or community members—in a project to benefit the environment.

To accomplish its mission and create sustainability, PROBEA establishes partnerships and builds collaborations in each community where it works.

How does PROBEA do what it does?
PROBEA tackles its ambitious goals with a unique participatory teaching-learning methodology. The curriculum draws from education theorists who emphasize the importance of hands-on, action-oriented activities that make it possible for us to educate minds, empower hearts and enable hands. The result is something extraordinary: environmental literacy and behavior change.

Who is PROBEA's audience?
PROBEA seeks to support educators with effective techniques to engage students in an active hands-on educational experience. Likewise, we engage community volunteers (promotores) and scientists to learn skills that will enable them to transmit their own knowledge, as well as what they learn in a PROBEA workshop, more effectively. The aim is to promote an "ethic of earth stewardship" that can be passed on to family, friends and ultimately the whole community.

Why is PROBEA effective?
PROBEA's educational programs are extremely effective because the information is relevant to individuals' lives. The activity-based curriculum is engaging for educators and their students and can be immediately implemented in the classroom or the community. This type of hands-on, applied education allows participants to contribute to the rehabilitation and sustainability of their environment. Another important aspect of this program is that it integrates cultures and countries that share a common bio-region and natural resources. School and community members work together for a common goal: the conservation of their environment.

Why is PROBEA mostly geared to teachers and other adults—scientists and promotores (community workers)—as opposed to kids?
PROBEA increases its leverage through working with teachers and other adults who, in turn, transfer knowledge to their respective audiences. Educating a class of 30 individuals may change 30 lives and perspectives, but when PROBEA delivers its message to 30 teachers, promotores or scientists, potentially hundreds of lives and entire communities can be changed with one workshop.

Where has PROBEA been?
PROBEA has held trainings in San Diego, throughout the entire peninsula of Baja California and the Northwestern states of Mexico. (View map.)

In Baja California, we have delivered trainings in Tijuana, Tecate, Ensenada, Mexicali, Rosarito, San Felipe, Bahía de los Ángeles, and San Quintín. In Baja California Sur, La Paz, San José del Cabo, Cabo San Lucas, Loreto, Mulegé, San Lucas, San Bruno, Palo Verde, Guerrero Negro, San Ignacio, and Santa Rosalia have all benefited from at least one PROBEA training. In Sonora, we have facilitated trainings in Guaymas, Empalme, Ciudad Obregón, Tóbari, Hermosillo, Puerto Peñasco; and in Mazatlán, Sinaloa.

What are PROBEA's educational objectives?

• To educate individuals to become environmentally responsible citizens.
• To make teachers and students aware of the need to care for our environment and learn practical ways to translate this awareness into effective actions in our homes, our schools and our communities.
• To present and put into practice innovative teaching/learning strategies featuring dynamic and engaging activities to foster environmental knowledge of the region we live in.
• To foster analysis and discussion of the different ways that we, as individuals and community members, can contribute to improving the quality of life in our communities through environmental stewardship.
• To acknowledge that we all live in a watershed and that we are individually responsible for its stewardship through learning and taking action regarding:
• the importance of water and how we use it in our daily lives
• techniques to reduce, reuse and recycle inorganic waste
• techniques to reduce and utilize organic waste
• hazardous substances
• natural habitats
• To present and practice guidelines and activities to encourage teachers and educators to provide outdoor learning experiences for their students and to use the environment as the integrating context for all subjects.
• To foster participation and action through school and community projects which benefit the environment.

Search | Site Index | Home

© San Diego Natural History Museum