WHAT IS CANARINA
“Nature is not a place you visit. It is a home.” (Gary Snyder)
Horst Eckert (alias Janosch) is the author of numerous children’s and adult books, illustrator and artist, for which he has been honoured with the German Youth Literature Prize, among other awards. Born in Hindenburg/Upper Silesia in 1931, he has lived on Tenerife since 1980. Since living on the island, Janosch has always been involved in animal welfare projects, until in 2019 he and his wife Ines Eckert (also a great nature and animal lover) decided to set up a foundation to protect and preserve the environment and animal welfare on the Canary Islands.
After two years of hard work with Elmar Uricher, a German lawyer and member of the advisory board of various foundations and family businesses, the Canarina Foundation for Nature and the Environment, based in Germany, was legally constituted in March 2021. Work will then begin on setting up a delegation in the Canary Islands, as this is the area in which the foundation intends to operate. Anne Striewe, biologist at the University of La Laguna, Master in Environmental Management, official tourist guide of the Canary Islands and a good connoisseur of the Canary Islands in general, has been in charge of setting up this delegation ever since.
During the following year, and pending the establishment of the delegation, the Foundation has been operating in the Canary Islands as a foreign organisation. Although it does not yet have any facilities or offices, the first two projects are launched during this period: the agro-ecological regeneration project “Finca Tamaide” and the environmental education programme “Conecta”.
After another year of bureaucratic and legal battles, the Canarina Foundation’s delegation in the Canary Islands finally saw the light of day in March 2022. From then on, the team began to grow, the projects already underway were consolidated and new lines of action began to take shape.
Currently, although the Canarina Foundation is based in Tenerife, its scope of action extends to the entire autonomous region of the Canary Islands, which are unique in the world for their natural and cultural heritage and landscapes. The Foundation’s philosophy is based on the conviction that it is essential to promote a change in people’s relationship with nature and all life in it, including people themselves.
Since its beginnings, the Canarina Foundation has had concrete goals and objectives as well as a clear philosophical line. At the same time, however, Canarina is an organisation that is still in the process of being established. Despite our short experience, it is already clear to us that we are in a process of constant development, continuous growth, progress and change, because we are an organisation that is geared towards a field of work that is also constantly evolving, that is immense and offers endless possibilities for action.