This purpose of this activity is to aid in sensitizing the students, encouraging them to directly pay attention to the relations between the elements so that they can assume responsibility for their actions by becoming aware of their place in the ecological cycle.

The elements being addressed are the 5 elements, which are the main actors being represented by the instructors and the students: air, trees, water, animal and humans. Each instructor guides its group (element), teaching them about their history as they interact.

This event is organized usually out of the school, where the students can be in an environment that is natural. In this manner we attempt to provide the children with an environment by which they can associate with the elements, so that they can identify with them and thus they can feel their effects more directly. For example: when the humans cut down the trees, the students sit down motionless representing trunks, the ones that act as exotic animals have to go away from the scene. Some of the kids that represent the water also leave the scene and in this way, the message of the consequences of deforestation can be assimilated in a much more visibly direct form.

Some of the points that are addressed are:

Deforestation, species extinction, compassion for animals, pollution, recycling and global warming.

History comes into account to show the principle that there once was harmony between humans and their environment, and through certain behaviors over time, the planet has began to deteriorate, the relation becoming more and more imbalanced as time passes. The story ends as alternatives are defined as to how we can improve the environmental situation of our planet.

Puppet shows:
(Primary schools and Gardens)

The puppet events are carried out in the Schools or in public places. The puppets are used to tell stories that have an environmental focus, encouraging the spectators to reflect on their own relationship with the environment. By personifying the elements of water, air, and animals, among others, the viewers are permitted a perspective of the environmental situation that they have not yet seen before.

PHASE III
Awareness

Dynamic Cognitive Classes.
(For all ages)

These classes generally are carried out in the schools or in town rooms where people have the opportunity to understand, to question, and to expand their awareness on issues such as:

•  The relation between the trees, the water, and the air.
•  The harmony between living beings and the areas that are not yet polluted.
•  The degradation of the environment and how cutting trees influences the ecosystem and all living beings within it.
•  Compassion towards animals and the personalization of nature.
•  The consequences of burning plastics.
•  The consequences of throwing trash into the water and forests.
•  The consequential effects of contamination on living things.
•  The importance of recycling and reducing forms of waste.
•  The importance of planting trees and how they affect the air we breathe and the water we drink.
•  Organic Agriculture.
•  Species extinction.
•  Renewable energy.
•  Genetically modified food.

At the end of this program, a small questionnaire is created for the children so that can express what they have learned. The program finishes with participatory music that is filled with ecological messages in order to inspire a love for the land and nature.

Surveys to Track Ecological Competency.
These surveys help the people to realize the impotence of conserving energy and their resources. This is a system that encourages people to give serious thought about the environment, and helps facilitate in children the development of a healthy feeling of competence so that a conscientiousness of the problems can be developed

Projections of Intentional Movies.
(For all ages)
These projections are carried out in schools or in public places. Movies which have an ecological focus are presented, for example: An Inconvenient truth. (Global Warming), Series of educational movies of the Center for the training for the sustainable development (SEMARNAT)

Stage IV
Expression

EcoSign Workshop :
(Primary schools)

Taking into account what has been learned and assimilated during the previous phases that the students have taken part in, they now can express their opinions and feelings through artistic expression in the form of posters and placards.

The children draw on the environmental themes that have been incorporated, and in this way they can assimilate the teachings with greater depth.

Using paint, crayons and even recycled materials, the students create artistic works that are focused on ecological concepts. This permits them with the freedom to explore their creativity and imagination, so that their ideas can be expressed and so they can share their ideas on this subject with their friends. In this way, common intentions can be recognized and achieved.

Articles/ Recycled Materials workshop.

In this workshop, the students learn to create a variety of types of baskets, water bottle holders and even hats made of recycled plastics from things such as rims of cars and many other elements. Old rowboats can even be separated from what once was ‘trash‘ as volunteers are called upon to decorate the recycled rowboats: using all kinds of plastics, these rowboats take on a new role as they are displayed with messages and motives. These rowboats are later placed in the

central plazas, homes and schools for all to see. In this way, the rowboats are boldly given a new function to be used as pieces of art created by the children promoting a responsible culture that pays attention to waste management.

Phase V
Demonstration.

It awakens a feeling of passion and protection for the environment when activities are implemented that are directed towards promoting the growth of a social movement in youths that puts emphasis on the fact that the value of natural resources can be passed down through generations.

We encourage this youthful current in washing over the land, protecting it and all the living beings on it in the process.

Pro-Earth Parade.
To finalize this process, the children take to the street with their placards (created in the 3rd phase), posting them in visible places while singing songs in for the earth. In short time, this procession of children becomes a pro-earth parade which always creates an impact in the community.

This activity permits the children to show their artistic works, ending the parade as confident defenders of the environment.

Cleaning the trash off the streets.
The children and the conductors of the event form a line which functions like a great human broom that collects and accumulates the trash in a given delineated area.

As they ‘sweep' they are followed by a group of drums and other instruments that help to highlight the event and helps to recruit additional volunteers in the process. This cleaning has shown to be an amusing event which helps to fortify the ties in the community.

Phase VI
Integration

System of Registration in the Ecoguardian Database.

Once the children pass the previous phases, they will be offered the opportunity to form part of the Ecoguradian federation.

This permits them to maintain a connection to a network of other students so that they are able to continue their participation by being reported of new ecological initiatives.

This can be achieved by means of a simple registration via the internet, where the students can choose among several options that the webpage offers:

*Viewing ecological posters in the art gallery. (scanned in phase 3)
*Be reported on events, workshops and assemblies so that they can learn about a diverse range of environmental councils.
*Notified for Eco-ntests.
*Participating in online surveys.
*Learning in virtual environmental classes.
*Seeing environmentally related videos.

These are going to be transmitted on the internet under the webpage www.ecoguarda.com , (in process) which also acts to facilitate the ecoguardians, events, workshops, councils, and galleries of images of the posters and surveys.

Planting fruit-bearing trees in schools
Revitalizes the school areas with fruit trees is an exemplary feat that provides of food to the students and encourages conscientiousness regarding forests.

Planting these trees is very necessary, especially when deforestatation processes are growing out of control. When children are able to participate in these plantations, they will be able make sure that these trees are nurtured, watching them daily as they grow, fostering the value of these trees as living organisms.

The plantations often are accompanied by educational classes on their care and maintenance. Often the children these areas eat store bought products, such as “Fritos” and other artificial food. Acknowledging this, they can learn to understand the important differences between store bought food compared to food that comes from a form that is natural, which is much more nutritious, doesn't generate as much trash, and is available without cost.

"To plant is to create life, and to participate in creating that life is a wonderful opportunity and a great duty."

Phase VII
Diffusion

To complete our program, we will create a program of informal environmental education, which is transmitted through the use of mass media, as much at the local level as it is at the national and international level.

Internet.

Most activities are transmitted on the internet, under the page www.NomadsUnited.com , and through this page there will be a link to ecoguarda, (when it's online) events, workshops, councils, and galleries of images of posters and surveys.

Television

In the television environment, we are creating a 25 chapter series on the history of the caravan that will be projected on cable television. This should be completed towards the end of the 2007. These programs will expose the classes of environmental education that are being filmed as we travel.

Radio

We propose our objectives on local community stations, including interviews with the students on the environmental situation. Also events and assemblies will are announced.

Magazines

Articles on our caravan are being continually published everywhere which will help to send the message out about our programs of environmental education.

Investigation and Results

Analysis of what was learned:

After showing our gratitude and then departing, the results are analyzed, the experiences are commented on, and the training potential that comes from accumulated knowledge obtained from the community is acknowledged, fortifying a system of mutual learning that optimizes our expectations and fortifies our energy as a group. At the same time, the results of the investigations are channeled to centers of investigation to be able to build a bridge among the interested scientific community, us and the rural communities.

Since the main directors of the environmental resources are the administrators of the rural communities, we understand the strategic importance that they have in the transformations of the ecosystems. Our objective is directed to impact mainly children and the young, who are by nature already open to these changes, because with them, the future of responsibility falls to make decisions or delegate decisions to other sectors of their future companies. To assume, as our primary intentions, the youth of the communities helps promote one of the main objectives of the environmental education. This helps with the political strengthening of the people who live in the towns we visit so that they can intervene actively on the management of its natural resources in such a way that an effective message in the use, management and protection of the natural resources can be strategized within the influential portion of the community. The new hope is to form new socio-environmental paradigms.

Combined with this, our work also promotes to other sectors to invest in the new fusions so that science therefore can find in the art a powerful channel for the transmission and teaching of scientific knowledge.

As well as the artistic area can be inspired by environmental problems so that the public in general can be sensitized to this type of knowledge. Although the fusion of science and art is not new, the incorporation of it in this field is. This brings an element of adventure that adds a different dimension which is full of new possibilities.