{"id":2830,"date":"2016-03-07T20:26:54","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T04:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coral.org\/news\/roatan-marine-park-on-its-way-to-autonomy-2\/"},"modified":"2021-09-01T12:35:34","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T19:35:34","slug":"roatan-marine-park-on-its-way-to-autonomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coral.org\/en\/blog\/roatan-marine-park-on-its-way-to-autonomy\/","title":{"rendered":"Roatan Marine Park\u2014On Its Way to Autonomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We love seeing communities come together to protect their coral reefs. The Roatan Marine Park (RMP) in Honduras is an inspiring example of how conservation efforts lead to great things. The success and growth they\u2019ve shown are tremendous.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, CORAL invested in the sustainability of RMP with a $12,000 grant to hire a sustainable finance coordinator. The new position was designed to help them diversify income streams and build relationships within the private sector. The goal was to increase their capacity so they can expand to new areas of the island and continue to protect Roatan\u2019s unique natural beauty.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-451\" src=\"https:\/\/coral.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_6002-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Roatan Marine Park\" width=\"660\" height=\"440\" \/><\/p>\n<p>With the new coordinator, the RMP has grown its membership base by 40 percent\u2014they\u2019ve built stronger relationships with donors, businesses, and community members. They also helped create a U.S. 501(c)3, which allows them to fundraise in the United States. \u201cA lot of visitors come here and want to make a tax-deductible donation to the park,\u201d says Jenny Myton, CORAL\u2019s associate programs director based in Honduras. \u201cThis new 501(c)3 makes that possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a result of the coordinator\u2019s hard work, the RMP just received a $100,000 donation from a popular clothing brand. The unrestricted donation will support the sustainable finance coordinator position for the next four years and will help pay for necessary marine management, patrols and community development projects.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-449\" src=\"https:\/\/coral.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_5847-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Roatan Marine Park\" width=\"660\" height=\"495\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe RMP is reaching a new level of independence,\u201d says Myton. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting to see that CORAL\u2019s initial investment is paying off. Communities can finance their conservation efforts, and we can use this example as a blueprint for other communities around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-446\" src=\"https:\/\/coral.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/DSC_0303-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of the turquoise water of Roatan \" width=\"660\" height=\"439\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We love seeing communities come together to protect their coral reefs. The Roatan Marine Park (RMP) in Honduras is an inspiring example of how conservation efforts lead to great things. The success and growth they\u2019ve shown are tremendous. Last year, CORAL invested in the sustainability of RMP with a $12,000 grant to hire a sustainable [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"coral_transparent_header":false,"coral_hide_siblings_nav":false,"coral_hide_flyout":false,"coral_hide_title":false,"coral_no_footer_gap":false,"coral_subtitle":"","coral_subheading":"","publication_title":"","link":"","authors":"","url":"","file":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coral-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coral.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coral.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coral.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coral.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coral.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coral.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coral.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coral.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coral.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coral.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}