2021 Reflexions & Strategy 2022

 MedGardens is a window to the sea, to what it can be - 2021 has been the first year of the initiative with remarkable outreach and progress, and we are amazed to start seeing through the window towards the future we want.

This was only possible thanks to our team & contributors of incredible human quality and the required technical skills, but also to the already large and powerful network.

Thanks to everyone joining MedGardens is how we have been able to grow our community and start building impact despite the early stage of the project. We, together, were able to tackle a range of strategic fields that MedGardens’ holistic approach needs to work, even through art.

We work simultaneously in different fronts such as securing human, technical and financial resources. These include building a strong network of sponsors, partners, supporters and of course, the MedGuardians volunteers; providing agile and accessible communication to relevant stakeholders and general audience and growing the number of actions we undertake to generate the impact we are determined to achieve.

Some other figures to highlight: 

• Strategy
  • 2 coastal authorisations granted for the areas of Formentor & Portocolom belonging to the Nature 2000 Network, allowing to start protecting a total area of about 10,000m2 by removing the marine litter and other non-natural installing the required buoy-lines
  • Participated in 2 EU grant applications led by other organisations and led another 2 applications for a total budget of 4.5M€ consisting in a coordinated proposal for community-driven marine restoration of 6 different shallow bays in Mallorca & Menorca
  • Scientific control and validation by the Institute for Advanced Mediterranean Studies (IMEDEA-CSIC-UIB) 

• Community
  • +11 new sponsors & donors
  • +18 new partners, which include scientific institutions and other nonprofit organisations working in marine regeneration
  • +36 new supporters. During the process of writing EU-Funding proposals, we reached out to a broad spectrum of professionals and experts, ranging from government institutions, corporate alliances, NGOs and individual experts from around the world. Once again, this demonstrates the importance of collaboration and collective efforts. 
  • +70 new volunteers joined the MedGuardians squad and 50+ Volunteers already engaged in different events, all passionate about marine conservation and a powerful and diverse skill set including marine sciences, scuba and freediving, underwater photography, etc. spending 60+ hours underwater.
  • 4 detailed characterization reports and restoration proposals were produced for 4 Balearic municipalities (20,000 m2 coastal shallow bays)
  • Raised 90k€+ and signed in the first corporate sponsorship agreement with Universal Hotels (open end)

• Communication & PR
  • Attended 15 events 
  • Built up a combined online audience of 1,300 followers and fans (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
  • Co-founded www.artformarineregeneration.org as a collaborative and multidisciplinary project that aims to contribute to marine regeneration through art
  • Founded MedGardens’ Soundcloud to set related interviews and music available for our audience

Watch the video-summary of the last community event sponsored by Universal Hotels.

If you want to learn more about what we did all together and achieved last year, and the challenges we face in 2022, we recommend you to read the Cleanwave Foundation’s Annual Report 2021 here 

Thanks to our sponsors, partners and volunteers, 2022 is the year we can start generating tangible impact and continue regenerating the Mediterranean underwater forests. 

We will continue to work tirelessly to achieve MedGardens’ vision of “Reestablishing the shallow underwater habitats of the Mediterranean Sea by 2030, mitigating the impacts of biodiversity loss and climate change”.

MedGardens’ main strategic lines of work for 2022 are:

• Improve key processes such as improving and diversifying our fundraising capability, as well as the finance & impact management and monitoring.
• Keep building alliances of all kinds to make the administrative and fundraising tasks more efficient providing our team more focus on action and impact.
• Grow our audience and improve our communication by generating monthly content on our blog that will be streamed via newsletters and socials to keep everyone up to date.
• Expand our community-based networks in the target zones of Sant Elm, Pollença and Porto Colom. We will do this by starting to undertake marine stewardship actions aiming to contribute to the long term conservation of the target zones.
• Generate and disseminate open-knowledge for a better management and conservation of the underwater forests of the Mediterranean.
• Start implementing marine restoration actions, both passive - set up of buoy lines to limit boat traffic and anchoring in the target areas - and active - seagrass transplants and algae reproduction enhancement -.

Together with you, we will keep working to make our community grow further and become more resourceful and resilient. To that regard, MedGardens counts on all the people and organizations that have supported us unconditionally during the first steps. 

MedGardens represents the opportunity for everyone to take part to fix what we have broken, and the hope that we can. 

Become a financial contributor or a volunteer today via Cleanwave Foundation’s linktree, and do not hesitate in contacting us anytime if you have any proposal or we can be of any assistance to find your best way to become an active MedGuardian.

Sea-cerely,

The MedGardens Team.