What is Project Oscar?
Project Oscar is an initiative to increase English fluency in the small coastal community of Puerto Cayo and the surrounding pueblos in the province of Manabí, Ecuador. Led by Oscar Pihuave, head of the Puerto Cayo's town assembly, the project aims to prepare the town and surrounding communities for English-speaking tourists. Located within the buffer zone of National Park Machalilla, the area is ideal for ecotourism. Oscar hopes that the capacity to receive English-speaking tourists will boost the town's ecotourism revenue, thus creating more jobs and increasing the community's standard of living. Further, he hopes that as the project grows, the number of young people who currently emigrate to big cities such as Guayaquil in search of work will decrease. Project Oscar seeks to bring University students from the United States to Puerto Cayo during the upcoming winter break of 2010 and summer break of 2011 to aid Oscar in this vision.
About Puerto Cayo
Puerto Cayo is a small coastal town in Ecuador. The town's income is earned primarily through fishing and tourism . Located in the buffer zone of the Ecuadorian National Park Machililla, it is only minutes away from Los Frailes, a beach named by National Geographic as one of the world's most beautiful. The town's restaurants and beaches attract tourists from all over the world. Unfortunately, the vast majority of international tourists from Europe and the United States do not speak Spanish and tend not to stop in Puerto Cayo, preferring instead to support the larger town of Puerto Lòpez, where English is more easily accommodated.
While support for all eco-tourism in National Park Machalilla is important, we believe above all in the importance of responsible ecotourism. Our hope is to support the growth of ecotourism in smaller communities like Puerto Cayo where the money can more directly benefit the small, generally family-owned businesses of the community rather than larger and often less environmentally responsible restaurants and hotels.
Support for these communities is crucial to ensure these families sustain a lifestyle within the National Park in the communities they have lived in for generations. As local fisheries' abundance decline and environmental restrictions on clearing trees and plants for farming or construction become more stringent the types of trees and plants that can be cut or cleared for farming or building materials become more stringent, communities are finding it more and more difficult to sustain a lifestyle living off the land. These communities are becoming smaller and smaller as young people find they need to leave to go to bigger cities like Guayaquil to find jobs to feed their families. Ecotourism in Puerto Cayo has generated the jobs and income to allow more families to remain in their communities.
