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Meet the "Mission: Harpy Eagle" Team

Welcome! We're delighted you've dropped by to visit us!  

As you browse around you'll get to know all about the people who comprise the Mission: Harpy Eagle team. What sets us apart is that we're a young, dedicated group of volunteer students (grades 7, 8, 9,  10, 11, 12) from Colegio Brader in Panama City, Panama. 

Despite our youth, we're savvy about and very sensitive to what's at stake here concerning the Harpy, as well as all other rare and exotic creatures among us that are now in danger of extinction. Our dedicated sense of mission is very infectious, and we hope to be able to bite you with the bug so that you, too, will feel the need to spread the word about why all of us must play a role to promote, protect, and improve conditions for Panama's Harpy Eagle, which is a unique  treasure for all of humanity as much as it is our country's national bird.

We're proud to have as our team leader none other than Teacher Ileana Cotes, Colegio Brader's professor of Science, whose inspiration and dedication has inspired our efforts to help our national bird.  Besides teacher Ileana  Cotes, new members from our school faculty will start working at our side to help us spread the conservation message.

Mission Harpy Eagle members are proud to welcome Teachers Irasema Torres, Rosalia Cedeņo, Oscar Rodriguez,  Carlos Batista, and George Wirth in our successful team.

Actually, we are working to raise  funds, undertake field research, advocate through peer-to-peer grassroots networks (see "Sister Schools" program), and educate people everywhere through public awareness programs (such as this Web site!) and information campaigns.

We think you'll enjoy reading about and seeing the Harpy "in action" here. If what you find strikes a chord, and moves you to lend support for our cause, only then will we know that our collective efforts are moving in the right direction, helping all of us--but most importantly the Harpy--to realize our vision and thereby fulfill our mission!

Under the Mission: Harpy Eagle banner, we the students at Colegio Brader (groups A and B) visit with, present information to, and  exchange views or important Harpy knowledge with our peer student counterparts at other schools throughout Panama. Our first mission visit to another school (see photo, opposite) was a resounding success, and we're now eagerly looking forward to having more of these opportunities in the future!  
 
Thanks to this visit, our first major leap forward, we're even more inpsired and have greater confidence that, through the momentum of such mission visits to talk about the issues with other students, we can help in the plight to save the Harpy Eagle from extinction.

We the student volunteers at Mission: Harpy Eagle are a multi-tasking, highly mobile, and extremely versatile team!

We divide ourselves into work teams to tackle specific tasks, and in this way you'll find some of us--but not all of us--out the door and going to visit different, team-assigned schools. For example, there may be one student on a team who's  not comfortable with public speaking, never mind standing up in front of a classroom filled with unfamiliar people at a distant school. No problem! Because everyone has a special gift or talent, this is the student you'll find busy at work behind the scenes, arranging logistics, making phone calls, copying and collating handouts or other materials, or perhaps creating "didactic" Harpy-focused games, tapping away on a computer, among many other things that cannot be done without the dedicated help of so many selfless volunteers.

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Here, we're in action to educate at Panama's "Pedro Ameglio" school.
 
Photos courtesy of Colegio Brader's student volunteers.

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Spearheded by some of our spirited team members (pictured above), our first "official" mission visit--an interactive chat and Q&A with students at Panama's Pedro Ameglio school--has helped to catapult the plight of the Harpy Eagle to the front burner among many students who would have otherwise remained in the dark about this important cause.