Faced with the various social, cultural and economic changes generated by development, we continue to accompany and support women, men, youth and children of the Association of Indigenous Communities of Arajuno -ACIA, and the Tzatzapi Community (Canelos) to reassess the importance and the value to their traditional production and food systems, through the recovery of forgotten seeds, the inter-generational transmission of knowledge and the celebration of traditional food festivals, as the fundamental basis of their food security and sovereignty.
For the revitalization and promotion of the use of medicinal plants, with a focus on the construction of indigenous and intercultural programs, the Waorani Organization of Pastaza -OWAP requested Sacha Warmi to train members of their communities of the Curaray and Ishpingo rivers in the elaboration of improved natural remedies.
In coordination with the group “Voices of the Forest”, the head of the Communication Program (William Grefa) participated in June in a training workshop for para-ecologists.
Rosa Canelos, director of the Women, Family and Territory Program of Sacha Warmi, made valuable contributions to the video on “The Rights of Nature”.
At the request of the Association of Indigenous Communities of Arajuno -ACIA, we wrote and designed a proposal for the construction of their Life Plan; a useful tool to defend their territorial autonomy against the threat of the entrance of Pluspetrol, one of the subsidiaries of the Agip Group, into their territory.
We continue planting more trees in degraded areas. This year we planted 500 trees of twenty different species, including timber, food, fruit, palm and cultural trees.
We also provided support to strengthen the wonderful work of a young kichwa woman from the Tzatzapi community, where she planted 180 trees of 25 different native fruit, palm and cultural species.
Thanks to the generosity of some donors, we are a few steps away from finishing the reconstruction of the “Casa de Cerámica”, the space where workshops and meetings are held and where ceramic pieces made by Kichwa women and natural products from Florasana are exhibited. In this new space, in February and September, meetings were held with groups of students from the World Learning organization.
Alisha Kendrick Prahan, a Fullbright student, visited us between September and October to learn about the role of women with indigenous health. Our thanks to her for her support with video editing.
Alex Cristodoulou and Dylan Souquet, M.A. students from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies were with us from October 8 to November 8 to carry out their field work with interviews on interpersonal and environmental conflicts in Indigenous territories.
We need your support to continue with our work for the conservation of biological diversity and the preservation of cultural diversity in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Thank you very much.
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Friends of Sacha Warmi
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