Sponsor Shipibo Youth Permaculture Training

In October this year, we took our intercultural education program another step forward by starting to work with the Shipibo community of Santa Clara. This community is geographically close to other communities in which we have been working and enables us to connect together permaculture projects in all these communities, which is part of our overall vision of landscape regeneration in this area.

Activities have been initiated in Santa Clara that we have successfully pioneered in other communities:

• Working with a group of mothers to teach them about nutrition by cooking a healthy meal together once a week for all 50 children in the community
• Having our Shipibo permaculture expert working with the children in the community school to teach them principles of sustainable agriculture through cultivating fruit, vegetables and medicinal plants on land close to the school
• Organizing workshops in which elders in the community teach the children aspects of the traditional culture (for example stories, songs and crafts), which are in danger of being lost.

The work in Santa Clara has been greatly helped by Lucy, one of our long-term volunteers living in the community. That has enabled her and us to better understand the needs of the community and gain their trust. Through the relationships that she developed with the local children, and the involvement of an artist friend of hers, she was able to facilitate the painting of two beautiful murals on the outside walls of the local primary and kindergarten schools.

We are very excited for the coming months, as the rainy season arrives and the kids will be getting their hands dirty planting lots of trees in the Permaculture Living Classroom.