ABHMS and ABF help students at Academia Bautista de Puerto Nuevo expand their environmental work and advocacy

VALLEY FORGE, PA (10/01/2026)—Students from Academia Bautista de Puerto Nuevo, Puerto Rico, learn about the health of their local ecosystem in a hands-on fashion. Their teacher, Professor Blanca Guemárez, who has taught science and math at Academia Bautista for 34 years, helps them measure the flow of the Puerto Nuevo River at several locations between two points along its course. This helps them understand the impact of deforestation and development on Puerto Nuevo's waterways and ecosystem. For many years, Academia students composted, gardened, recycled, and participated in community cleanups.

The Puerto Nuevo River in Puerto Rico, where students from Academia Bautista de Puerto Nuevo studied the waterway to understand the effects of deforestation and development on the local ecosystem. Photo courtesy of Yarfpr.

When the school received an American Baptist Foundation Palmer grant through American Baptist Home Mission Societies (ABHMS), students were able to scale up their work considerably. “We needed to do something else," said Guemárez, who helped launch the school's environmental club, Guardianes de la Tierra (Earth Guardians), 25 years ago. Students wanted to understand “the problems that really affected us as a community,” she said. The work the grant enabled is expansive.

Students have developed local partnerships that helped them understand their neighbors' concerns. “We have the chance to start to look at the community problems by having the experience to meet with local leaders from that organization that makes them think about the problem. Okay, why is the community so concerned? We already enjoy the river now—why are we concerned about it?” said Yolanda Cordero, another professor at Academia Bautista.

Together with scientists from the University of Puerto Rico, the Earth Guardians had the opportunity to conduct field-based learning about local waterways. Cordero called the outcome of that collaboration a “lab in the river.” Another collaboration with Georgetown University trained the Earth Guardians in photovoice, a qualitative research method that communicates communities’ concerns beyond the community itself. They could now document the environmental problems they cared about through photography and reflect in writing on why they cared about these issues. Their work has been published as a digital book, “Framing the Future: Voices and Visions of Youth in San Juan, Puerto Rico,” in Spanish and English.  

Finally, the students used Google Maps to identify and document problem areas in Puerto Nuevo. “For instance, if we saw trees being cut, deforestation, if we saw areas of drought, or the other way around, a lot of rain coming up and affecting that area...we started mapping that, then taking that to the government, to let them know that our communities were having these problems, and that it needed to be addressed by our government,” explained Guemárez.

She was thankful for the support: “[The students] didn’t mind working for hours, doing all this work, even though they were in finals. They had to take tests [at that time.] But they were really, really, really into it, and they did a great job. So, again, the grant allowed us to do all this, and we’re really grateful.”

Connecting learning about the community’s concerns, research, and advocacy is especially important now, as Puerto Rico faces a water crisis. ABHMS is addressing the crisis through its Wells of Hope for Puerto Rico: Strengthening churches. Sustaining communities initiative, which helps distribute water cisterns across the island.

To support young people who do environmental work in their communities and to learn more about Wells of Hope for Puerto Rico: Strengthening churches. Sustaining communities, visit ABHMS’ donor portal.

By Rev. Dr. Anna Piela, ABHMS senior writer and editor of The Christian Citizen