Sponsor Shipibo Youth Permaculture Training

Dear Friend of the Amazon,

I would like to invite you to participate a unique opportunity to have a huge impact in the lives of indigenous youth in the Amazon: all new & recurring donations made to our project before midnight on Wednesday, September 10th will be matched! 

Indigenous youth in the Shipibo communities we work with have a constant need for support to continue their educations. Our program combines the best of traditional wisdom with modern knowledge to help these young people strengthen their cultural identities while increasing their access to education and sustainable livelihoods in the future.

Double your impact today by supporting culturally-relevant edication initiatives for indigenous youth in the Amazon!

With your help we will:

• strengthen cultural identity and empower youth with innovative education programs in schools and communities
• teach traditional agriculture and forestry practices to provide regeneratively grown and nutrient rich food to students
• revitalize knowledge about medicinal plants, art, music and dance
• work with young women and girls to raise self-esteem and teach about women's health
• give university scholarships to indigenous young people

You can make this, and much more, possible by becoming a recurring collaborator with this project today and making your impact count two-fold! Make sure you select "monthly recurring" when you make your donation, as only these will be doubled by a generous supporter.

Why wait?! Share this opportunity with your networks now! 

In Solidarity,

Paul & the Alianza Arkana team

Just under two months ago, we set up the second stage of a project in the indigenous Shipibo community of Puerto Firmeza where last year a Mexican nutritionist, Mariana, was working with us to run workshops for a group of mothers to teach them about  balanced and healthy nutrition for their families. Mariana did this through the medium of cooking meals together with the women of the communities and adapting traditional recipes to include the nutrients that she had identified were missing in their diet as they changed from a traditional diet to a more Western based diet (including more carbohydrates and sugars into their diet).

In this new phase of the program we are supporting the mothers to continue to cook together and also to offer a lunch of high nutritional value once a week to the children at the local school, which uses produce locally grown at the permaculture project attached to the community. The delightful thing to see is how the mothers are implementing what they learnt in the first phase in this second phase without needing the support of a nutritionist. An additional exciting development is that the program is now run coordinated by two young Shipibo women, Liz and Marleni. Liz is our administrative assistant and has always dreamed of becoming a nutritionist or a pediatrician. Marleni is a trained nurse who brings her scientific knowhow about the human body to these classes, all in their indigenous language. Additionally, Marleni will be continuing her studies into the masters level with a scholarship through Alianza Arkana later this year. We are very excited to see these Shipibo women emerge as community leaders.

The dedication and progress the mothers are making towards the promotion of healthy diet choices in puesuit of seeing their children thrive is really an inspiring one to watch. It is thanks to the support of people like you that this project continues to be such a success!