Agroforestry the Peruvian Amazon

Firstly, I would like to thank you again for your support – especially the many of you who are making regular monthly donations, which is invaluable for us in enabling us to plan our work through having a regular monthly income apart from grants and one-off donations.

 Next, I’d like to give a short organizational update. We are increasingly attracting talented, skilled, committed and enthusiastic volunteers to work with us. The large site we now have in Yarina helps us greatly with this as we have accommodation there for up to ten volunteers.

 Sadly, a number of volunteers have recently left AA as their time with us has come to an end. However, we have a great new group of volunteers who have started with us within the last month.

 These new volunteers include:

• Soraya, a Frenchwoman living in Australia, who is with us for four months as a Marketing and Communications intern, as her extended placement on a Masters in International Community Development at Victoria University, Australia.
• Michael, a Dutchman with an engineering background in large companies, who has been helping us enormously with the development of our new website and IT systems, and all things practical related our office and volunteer accommodation site.
• Anna, a young German volunteer from Eco-Selva, a German environmental organization, who is with us for one year between school and university, and is working with a local urban Shipibo school and community.

 Please see the photo of all four of us from a recent visit to the Instituto Educativo Bilingue (EIB) in Yarina, together with Zamara, a teacher at the EIB, who we are collaborating with to help build a cultural center and museum at the EIB. The EIB is one of the key teacher training institutes in the region helping develop teachers with an intercultural education perspective.

 Other highlights from the last three months include:

• Building, in association with UNICEF, more eco-latrines in both rural and urban Shipibo communities.
• Beginning a new project with a local indigenous organization, AIDI (Indigenous Association for Integral Development, in English) to create the first Shipibo-Spanish-English dictionary.
• Participating in the march in Pucallpa on August 9^th, the UN International Day for Indigenous Peoples, in support of indigenous rights.
• Supporting and helping organize a workshop on human and legal rights in the Shipibo community of Paoyhan, with respect to the operation of the oil company operating within their territory.
• Meeting with the new President of the National Intercultural University of the Amazon (UNIA) to lay the ground for signing a renewed agreement.

 Watch out for the launch of our new website, which will be coming soon.

 Once again, many thanks for your support, which makes all this work possible.

 PS Our next ten-day, on-line, discussion-based course on the AA learning community platform with Dr Dennis Mckenna called ‘The Chemistry of the Amazon’ starts on Monday October 19^th

First of all a huge thank you to all those of you who have contributed to this project which aims to finacially support Alianza Arkana in our mission to be forming grassroots alliances to help protect and regenerate the Peruvian Amazon through supporting its indigenous peoples and their customs.

In return for your support we have invited you to our online learning community. We have had two on-line forums for that community - the first entitled 'Social Leadership in an Internet Age' and the second which is just coming to an end on 'Conversation as a practice in Social and Political Change'. Slowly, we are gathering momentum for these online forums. The second forum in particular has generated some interesting conversations which can still be read and commented on.

In the nearly three months since we began this project, donations made on this site have enables us to do the following work in each of our three key program areas of intercultural education, social and environmental justice, and community-based solutions (permacultire and eco-sanitation):

• Support the construction of a library and a mural in a primary school in the Shipibo community of Santa Clara where one of our volunteers is working.

• Paint a mural on the wall of the kindergarten school in the urban Shipibo community of Bena Jema together with the teachers and children from the school

• Set up a one day workshop in the Shipibo community of Poayan about community members' legal rights in relation to the oil and gas company beginning to operate on their territory. At this workshop we gave three presentations, two by Shipibo students working closely with Alianza Arkana from communities effected by the operations of the oil company.

• Build a small nursery on our office and volunteer accommodation site in the indigenous part of Pucallpa which we are converting into a working model of an urban permaculture site.

Once again many thanks for your support and I look forward to being in contact with you through our learning community site.