The Morpho Institute

The Morpho Institute is a 501(c)3 nonprofit created to support the key role of K-12 education in realizing the global goal of environmental conservation and sustainability. To achieve this goal, The Morpho Institute provides professional development programs and curriculum resources which support local to global environmental stewardship in K-12 instruction.

In collaboration with US and international partners, The Morpho Institute provides US educators the opportunity to experience the Amazon rainforest as a compelling context for developing a global perspective on biological and cultural resources, participating in conservation, exploring sustainability, and inspiring environmental stewardship. Our field workshops and resources apply key elements of inquiry, STEM, and placed-based learning to assist educators in making these critical local to global connections in their classrooms, instruction, and curricula.

K-12 Professional Development: Immersive workshops in the Amazon rainforest nurture passion for teaching, buildcross-disciplinary perspectives, and enhance skills that lead to deep student learning.

Classroom Connections: Cross-cultural connections, scientific research, engineering design, and stewardship projects build students’ knowledge, skills, and passion to act as global citizens.

Conservation Education: Conservation initiatives of Amazonian communities provide rich opportunities for learning about sustainability while being inspired by persistence, resilience, and hope.

While we are small, all-volunteer board, we have extensive background in education, community-based conservation, curriculum development, and program evaluation. In addition, we believe in the power of collaboration and actively seek out partnerships and strategic alliances to further our mission and amplify our impact.

The Morpho Institute was founded in late 2018, but we are building on a 25 year legacy of high quality, transformational professional development for K-12 educators. While we are proud of this legacy, we believe that there is much more that we can do to realize our goal of 'Amazon Conservation Through Education.'

Our goal for the next 5 years is to expand access to our field programs in the Amazon and increase equity and diversity across all aspects of our work - both in the Peruvian Amazon and here in the USA. In order to do this, we are actively engaged in seeking funding to support teacher scholarships, citizen science projects, and on-going professional development opportuntities for K-12 educators. In addition we agressively working to create and curate curriclum resources which educators can use to link the Amazon rainforest to their instruction.

By building awareness about the Amazon rainforest and the people fighting for its survival, we believe that Amazon Conservation through Education is a goal that can be realized in our lifetime.