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