The Coastal Conservation and Education Foundation (CCEF), founded in 1998, helps conserve coastal and marine resources for the benefit of coastal residents and encourages all coastal stakeholders to become good stewards of the marine life and coastal ecosystems they depend on. In our 25 years, we have undertaken and supported hundreds of projects to make this vision a reality by working with many partners to address a variety of challenges. Our partners range from municipal governments, fishing communities and NGOs to national agencies, academic institutions and donors. Our mission is clearly aimed to Sustain Coasts through Involved Communities.

CCEF works in an adaptive manner so that it can achieve positive outcomes and build resilience in response to current needs. In recent years CCEF has responded quickly to mitigate major typhoon damage to reefs and coastal communities by assessing the damage and assisting with plans for restoration of coastal habitats and ecosystems as well as guiding the human aspects of recovery. Because CCEF, in all projects, works directly with communities to support their marine conservation, waste management, tourism and livelihood development, it is really building community and environmental resilience in a variety of forms.

The longer-term vision of CCEF is that more and more area come under effective management so that benefits from coral reef, mangrove, seagrass and associated coastal ecosystems can be maximized to the benefit of fisheries, tourism and other direct products they provide to people living in the area. Having effective marine protected areas and well designed and implemented integrated coastal management plans is key to the success of CCEF and its partners.

While the projects of CCEF are described in our website, I want to highlight the ability of CCEF to work across multiple dimensions as required by the ecosystem-based management in Danajon Bank off northern Bohol. The Danajon Bank double barrier reef is too large and diverse to be managed by any one agency or single group of stakeholders. And so it is that thanks to the coordinating work of CCEF and others, the various towns are attending to the environmental management of this large and valuable resource area.

Significantly, they are proceeding to protect their local food security through the collective conservation and management of their marine areas. CCEF has been able to refine this approach after working with clusters of municipalities in southern Cebu to achieve collaborative fisheries and marine protected areas management that is essential to address the larger issues of coastal law enforcement, mobile illegal fishers and oceanographic variability. Such cooperative undertakings focus on activities that jointly address the common resource threats among the municipal jurisdictions, such as degradation of key habitats, overfishing, and dwindling fish stocks.

I cannot speak highly enough of the energy, creativity, and hard-working ethic of the CCEF Staff. We realize that nothing would be possible without dedicated staff working under the direction of our experienced Executive Director, Ms. Evelyn Deguit. Indeed, the CCEF team is committed and can respond to the issues of the day while maintaining a solid focus on our long-term goals.