Sponsor Shipibo Youth Permaculture Training

Many thanks to our supporters, especially our regular donors, who have continued to contribute monthly donations since out first fund raising campaign last year.

This money has enabled us in the last three months to start a significant new project at the intercultural rural school in the Indigenous Shipibo community of Puerto Firmeza called “Grow & Cook”. This project is led by the nutritionist working full time with Alianza Arkana and has been made possible by the donations enabling us to build a traditional Shipibo model kitchen within the school grounds and to provide some of the food for the workshops.

This project is important because:

• It will provide classes in nutrition and cooking to students at the school and their mothers about the importance of a balanced diet. We have recently completed an in-depth study of the Shipibo diet in three communities, which has highlighted the need for good nutritional information to be made available and also indicated certain micro-nutrients that are lacking in the diet.
• It further builds school-community links by developing more connections between the work that is being done in the school grounds to grow fruit and vegetables, the teaching of the students about how to do this, and the mothers of the students who are attending the classes.
• It helps to reinforce traditional culture by using traditional cooking techniques and recipes.

The next stage of this project will be to run workshops for the mothers who are attending the cooking/nutrition classes on how to cultivate their own family orchards to guarantee a supply of healthy food for their families.

Another important development of the project in the last three months has been to clear an area to cultivate corn, which will provide food for the chickens that are being reared at the school. Over time, we hope to provide nutritious meals for the students at the school based on eggs and meat from the chickens, fish from the fish farm (which we plan to complete by the end of the year) and the fruit and vegetables, which are being cultivated in the school grounds.