COVID-19 Peru Project #26871

Support Indigenous Students in the Face of COVID19

by Instituto Chaikuni

Project Report | Aug 16, 2019
Celebrating Indigenous Knowledge and Wisdom

By Stefan Kistler | Executive Director of The Chaikuni Institute

Day gathering of indigenous youth

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Last week, on August 9th, the world celebrated the international day of the world´s indigenous
peoples. While we at the Chaikuni Institute celebrate, learn from, honour and promote
indigenous peoples – their cultures, knowledge systems, cosmovisions, environmental
stewardship, etc. – every day in our work, we joined in the global celebration last week.
Our Loreto region of Peru is home to 31 indigenous peoples speaking 29 different indigenous
languages. For this year´s occasion, as last year, we teamed up with the local branch of the
Ministry of Culture and several other like-minded local organizations, to organize the second
encounter of indigenous Amazonian knowledge and wisdom and celebrate this incredible
cultural diversity.

Rather than being a simple showcase of “exotic” chants and dances, the event aimed at raising
awareness among the local population and exhibit a glimpse of the extremely rich cultural
indigenous heritage of our region. From birth to childhood, to adulthood, to death, and the
afterlife: 7 different indigenous peoples shared their traditions on how their culture perceives
the different stages in life with the audience in a large public park in Iquitos, through stories,
icaros (chants), dances, and rituals. Paradoxically enough, the local population in the largest
city of the region is often entirely unfamiliar with these ancestral knowledge systems.

Earlier in this week of celebrations, the Chaikuni Institute organized a full-day gathering of
indigenous youth. About 50 indigenous youth studying at different institutions of higher
education in Iquitos participated in the event, discussing their priorities on key topics such as
territory, development, health and sanitation, and their political organization. We furthermore
reviewed a preliminary version of our documentary about the indigenous students directly
with the protagonists and gathered important inputs for the finalization of the documentary.

Besides this week of festivities, we continued our advocacy to promote the project of the
student residency, exploring different concrete alternatives. However, the regional
government is very slow in presenting an alternative piece of land for the student residency
[after they announced that the land leased to the students had been designated for other
purposes (see the previous report)].

Nonetheless, we continue to accompany and support the
students in finding a new piece of land, and are exploring and defining new strategies to find
financial and technical support for the design, planning and construction of a sustainable and
ecofriendly housing project for the students.

We'll keep you updated with the latest news as we continue to run our campaign for the full
funding goal, and for the student residency to become a reality. Any donation will help to keep
us going.

We thank you for everything you continue to do to support indigenous youth in the Peruvian
Amazon.

With gratitude,

The Indigenous Students of OEPIAP and The Chaikuni Institute Team

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May 17, 2019
Continuing the Uphill Battle to Build a Permanent Student Center

By Stefan Kistler | Director of the Chaikuni Institute

Students posing in the new and improved residence

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Today, we thought we´d seize the opportunity to briefly tell you a bit about the difficult political context we are working in and the challenges the students and our Institute face trying to build a permanent student center for the indigenous students here in Iquitos.

A short re-cap: In late 2017, the students achieved a (seemingly) historic victory as the Regional Government signed an agreement to lease a piece of land to them for 10 years (renewable) where the future student residence shall be built. In 2018, the government approved a project to build temporary housing on the land, announcing the start of the construction several times throughout the year. Yet, when the 4-year term of the government came to a close in the end of 2018, not one single brick had been laid out. The exception: In mid-2018, with your help, we at the Chaikuni Institute went ahead and built a computer room and office space for the students.

A few months after the new government had taken over office, and the students re-opened negotiations for the building of the student housing, the government announced that they would nullify their agreement over the lease of the land. They proclaimed that the agreement had legal procedural errors, and that the land was zoned for other purposes. In short, the future residency cannot be built on the piece of land granted to them in 2017.

Once this shock was somehow digested, instead of giving up, the students and Chaikuni armed a new advocacy campaign towards the regional government, teaming up with more allies such as the local arm of the Ministry of Culture. The attitude of the Regional Government so far has been collaborative; a series of meetings to identify a new alternative piece of land for the students has given some preliminary results. At the same time, a committee is being established that will together draw up a public project and plans for the student residency. In the meantime, the students have once again been moved to another temporary hostel; but this time to a residency with much improved living conditions.

Of course, our Intercultural Education program has also been doing many other activities. We continued our workshops on bee-keeping with stingless bees, organizing two visits to our permaculture center. For the upcoming documentary, we accompanied some students in their lectures at the University and visited Leonarda, a young and energetic Tikuna woman studying in Iquitos, in her native community Cuchillococha, situated further down on the Amazon river, close to the boarder with Brazil and Columbia.

In early May, we had the pleasure to receive Viktorija, field traveler for South America from GlobalGiving, here in Iquitos. We organized a full day visit to our permaculture center, where the indigenous students and our staff organized a so called minga (=communal work). It is very common in the Loreto region that village members gather regularly to do communal work; building a school, clearing a communal field, improving a road or a path, etc. The female students had prepared masato for the event; a traditional drink made out of (usually fermented) cassava, widely used among indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon. The day was shared between setting up ecological gardens, drinking masato and sharing experiences.

We'll keep you updated with the latest news as we continue to run our campaign for the full funding goal, and for the student residency to become a reality. Any donation will help to keep us going.

We thank you for everything you continue to do to support indigenous youth in the Peruvian Amazon.

With profound gratitude,

The Indigenous Students of OEPIAP and The Chaikuni Institute Team

Visiting the students at the University (UPO)

Students preparing the 'masato' traditional drink

Welcoming Viktorija-Global Giving during her visit

Visiting Cuschillococha, Leonarda's community

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Feb 25, 2019
READY, SET, GO! FOR A NEW YEAR AND A NEW DOCUMENTARY

By Stefan Kistler | Director of the Chaikuni Institute

Dear Friends and Supporters,

First of all, we hope you all had a happy holiday season and a great start into the new year. Since we last wrote to you, direct project activities have been running on a slower pace. In December, the National University of the Peruvian Amazon in Iquitos, where most of the indigenous students of OEPIAP study, has been on a general strike. Some students – the few with sufficient economic means – seized the opportunity to travel to their families in their native communities for the holiday season.

When the university shuts down, the most affected are usually the students. When lectures finally re-start, they do so with a packed and chaotic schedule, to somehow make up the lost time. With a hectic January and semester exams in February, the indigenous students have seen most of their time being taken up by classes and exam preparations. To support the students in this challenging period, we offered mathematic classes and tutoring, intensifying the efforts now in early February.

The end of a semester always also means the arrival of new young students, aspiring to pass the entrance examinations and enter start their university career. Our team, together with the leadership of OEPIAP, organized a special half day event for the 20 plus postulants, offering an introduction to basics about life in the city, the university, and the student organization.

Since December, we have also been preparing the ground for a new documentary film project about the indigenous students in Iquitos: together with them! The story and script for the film have all been developed with the student´s participation. Perhaps more important, throughout several workshops with a core group of students, our team taught them about the planning, filming and production of a short video project. The students will not only be protagonists of this documentary, but at the same time learn about the technicalities and craft of filming and the production of audio-visual material. Quite a lot of footage has already been filmed and we are optimistic that we will have a final product to present in our next report. Stay tuned!

For us at the Chaikuni Institute in general and our intercultural education program in particular, the end/start of the year always also means a time for report writing, auto-evaluation and planning. We are currently also intensifying our search for new grants and project donors; our program cannot exist without funding.

The next months will see us step up the coordination to finalize the building plans of the student´s residency center and search for potent partners to fund the project; organize new Excel and English classes; and plan fresh visits to our permaculture site to continue the student´s learning about stingless bee-keeping, honey production and permaculture.

We'll keep you updated with the latest news as we continue to run our campaign for the full goal of $24,000. Any donation will help to keep this project going.

We thank you for everything you continue to do to support indigenous youth in the Peruvian Amazon.

With profound gratitude,

The Indigenous Students of OEPIAP and The Chaikuni Institute Team

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