After nearly four decades of working with cotton-top tamarins, I’ve spent countless hours in the forests of Colombia watching these amazing little monkeys leap through the trees. I’ve followed them through tangled vegetation, watched babies grow up, seen forests disappear, and celebrated as newly planted trees have grown tall enough for cotton-tops to use them. Over all those years, I’ve learned that if we want cotton-top tamarins to have a future, we need healthy forests. But I’ve also learned something equally important: saving a species doesn’t always begin in the forest. Sometimes, it begins in a classroom. And sometimes, it begins with a teacher like Haidy Gomez.

Haidy teaches preschool at the Institución Educativa San Nicolás de Tolentino in Puerto Colombia, Atlántico. Until recently, cotton-top tamarins weren’t a major part of her classroom. She knew about them, of course, but, as she told me, she had never really “immersed herself in their world.” That changed in 2025, when her school received an invitation from the Secretaría de Educación to participate in activities celebrating the cotton-top tamarin. The invitation arrived only a couple of weeks before the special day, so Haidy didn’t have months to prepare an elaborate conservation program. Instead, she simply started talking to her students.

As a preschool teacher, Haidy believes that children learn best when you begin with the world they know. So, rather than starting with endangered species somewhere far away, she introduced them to an animal from their own backyard—one found only in Colombia. At first, the children knew very little about cotton-top tamarins. Some had heard of them, but they didn’t know that cotton-tops were threatened with extinction. They didn’t understand why their forests were disappearing or why people should never capture a cotton-top and keep it as a pet. So Haidy began telling them the story of the tití. They learned about that unmistakable shock of white hair, discovered what cotton-tops eat and where they sleep, and explored the importance of the forests they need to survive. Little by little, they also began to understand what happens when those forests disappear and why protecting the cotton-top tamarin means protecting the place it calls home. 

But Haidy wasn’t satisfied with simply teaching them facts. These were preschoolers, after all, and learning needed to become something they could experience. So they played. They sang. They drew pictures and listened to stories. They explored the trees around their school and looked at images of the tropical forests where cotton-tops live. They dressed up as cotton-top tamarins and invented their own stories about them. Through play, imagination, and exploration, conservation became more than information in a classroom. Slowly, something began to happen: the cotton-top tamarin stopped being just another animal they were learning about in school.

It became their animal. One day, the children said something to Haidy that I absolutely love: “Profe, we have to protect not only the tití, but the trees too, because if there are no trees, where will the titís sleep?” Just think about that for a moment. These are very young children, yet they had already made one of the most fundamental connections in conservation: you cannot save cotton-top tamarins without saving their forest. No one had asked them to memorize that sentence for a test. They had figured it out for themselves. The monkey needs the tree. The tree is part of the forest. And if we want the monkey to survive, we have to protect its home.

That is when education becomes something much more powerful than learning facts. It becomes understanding. And understanding can lead to action. Haidy kept finding new ways to make that connection stronger. During the Month of the Cotton-top Tamarin in August, she decided they should have a celebration the children would immediately understand: they threw the cotton-top tamarin a birthday party. Yes, there was even a cake. Haidy is very quick to clarify that August 15 is not actually the cotton-top tamarin’s birthday! But that wasn’t really the point. For her preschoolers, birthdays are important. Birthdays mean celebrating someone special. So, for one day, they celebrated the tití. I can imagine those little children gathered around the cake, singing “Happy Birthday” to a monkey that most of them had barely known anything about a year earlier. And I can also imagine them remembering it. That matters.

One of the things we have learned at Proyecto Tití is that conservation education is most powerful when children don’t simply receive information, but develop an emotional connection to the species and forests around them. We want a child to recognize a cotton-top tamarin and think, That animal is Colombian. That animal belongs in the forest. That animal is something we should be proud of and protect. Haidy was watching that transformation happen right in front of her.

Then her little conservationists did something even she hadn’t expected: they became scientists. Haidy and her students participated in AtlantiCiencia, where the children had the opportunity to share what they had learned. Before that experience, Haidy admits that she had fallen into a trap that many of us probably fall into—underestimating what young children can do. They’re preschoolers, we think. Surely a scientific event is too advanced for them. Her students proved otherwise. They didn’t just repeat information Haidy had taught them; they understood it well enough to explain it to other people.
For Haidy, it was a revelation. Age wasn’t the barrier she had imagined. What mattered was how children were given the opportunity to learn—through questions, exploration, art, stories, and experiences that made sense in their world. Listening to Haidy talk about her students reminded me of something I have seen again and again during my years with Proyecto Tití: never underestimate a child. Give children information and they will learn. Give them an experience and they will remember. Give them a reason to care, and they may surprise you with what they do next.

What excites me most about Haidy’s story is that she doesn’t see this as a project that ends when the school year ends. The children she began working with were in preschool, and next year they will move into primary school. Haidy wants the tití to go with them. She imagines this little group continuing to learn about cotton-top tamarins year after year, gradually bringing other students and teachers into the project. I love thinking about what that could mean. Today, these children draw cotton-top tamarins. A few years from now, perhaps they will plant trees. Maybe one of them will stop someone from buying a wild animal as a pet because they understand that wildlife belongs in the wild. Maybe they will explain to their parents why a patch of forest matters, or teach younger students what they once learned from Haidy. And perhaps, years from now, one of them will become a biologist, teacher, environmental leader, or conservationist. We may never know how far that first lesson travels.

There was something else Haidy said that really stayed with me. In Colombia’s Caribbean region, children grow up celebrating a rich cultural heritage. They learn about Carnaval, music, dance, food, and traditions. These are important parts of understanding who they are and where they come from. But Haidy asks an equally important question: What about our natural heritage? What about the animals and plants that make Colombia’s Caribbean region unlike anywhere else on Earth? Shouldn’t children grow up knowing those, too? Absolutely. For me, that may be the most important part of Haidy’s story. For decades, we have worked to make the cotton-top tamarin a source of pride for Colombia. Cotton-tops live nowhere else on Earth. They are 100% Colombian, and their future depends on what happens here.

But people cannot protect something they don’t know. That is why what happens in Haidy’s classroom matters so much. A child hears a story about a little monkey with crazy white hair. She draws it. She sings about it. She learns that it sleeps in trees. Then she learns those trees are disappearing. Suddenly, a tree isn’t just a tree anymore—it is somebody’s home. And a monkey she had never thought much about becomes our tití.

That is how conservation begins. It doesn’t always begin with a scientist walking through the forest carrying a radio receiver. It doesn’t always begin with thousands of trees being planted or hectares of forest being protected. Sometimes, it begins with a preschool teacher who decides to teach her students about something extraordinary that belongs to them. And sometimes, it begins with a group of children standing around a cake, singing “Happy Birthday” to a cotton-top tamarin. Haidy described her contribution as planting a granito de arena—doing her small part to help. But I think she is planting something much bigger. She is planting seeds: seeds of curiosity, seeds of pride, and seeds of responsibility. And perhaps, years from now, when those children are adults and cotton-top tamarins are still racing through the forests of northern Colombia, we will see just how important those seeds really were.