Por Daniela Pujol Pérez 
The COCOMAR “Friends of Nature” and Ecológito projects, both dedicated to promoting love and care for the environment, gave birth to the First Edition of the Madre Tierra 2023 Environmental Innovation and Creation Festival.
The teacher of the Francisco Vega Alemán elementary school of the Peñas Altas popular council and coordinator of the COCOMAR project, Maryvel Delgado López, dreamed of the festival since 2020, the year in which it could not be held due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Postponed for three years, Mother Earth 2023, saw the light at the beginning of May.
The also general organizer of the event explained that both the designs and the making of the parade costumes were in charge of the children, all made with recyclable materials.
«The idea of the Festival arises from the need to unite boys, girls, parents, grandparents and friends in a cultural educational activity where they can show everything they have learned and accomplished in a long year of work,» said Delgado López.
Betty Correa Reyes, coordinator of Ecológito, expressed the intention of both projects to hold this festival every year, with the aim of promoting adequate environmental education in children and young people.
The Bahía cabaret in the city of Matanzas hosted the cultural gala that, in addition to honoring the Blue Planet, was also a space to celebrate mothers. Cultural moments at the hands of artists from the community and the Corcel de Esperanza project, along with a fashion catwalk designed and paraded by children enlivened the gala.
Alan Castillo García, is in the sixth grade at the Francisco Vega Alemán school and has been part of the project of teacher Maryvel for a year now.
«In the project we carry out various activities and express our ideas, and we make things with materials that are no longer used to protect Nature.»
We do crafts, for example, we take latices and make garlands. I have been in the project of the teacher Maryvel for two months, she has a room in my school and we dance there, we practice poetry”, commented Leidys Mariam Jiménez Fuentes, a nine-year-old girl.
Promoting art as a tool for social and environmental transformation was the number one objective of both projects when they came together to give life to the 2023 Madre Tierra Environmental Festival of Innovation and Creation.
COCOMAR «Friends of Nature» and Ecológito are two groups from the city of Matanzas that work on environmental issues, each one in their space (Peñas Altas and Versalles respectively) they work throughout the year, to bring messages of love and harmony focused on caring for Mother Earth. (ALH)
Translated by Casterman Medina de Leon