Agroforestry the Peruvian Amazon

Dear all

First of all, as always, many thanks for your ongoing support.

Secondly, about the learning community. We now have dates for the next course with Mitch Schultz, Director of the acclaimed documentary, 'DMT: The Spirit Molecule', which you can see on Youtube here. Mitch will be offering his ten-day on line course on 'Open Source Reality' from 2nd to 11th April. I will write to you separately about that nearer the time.

I am still waiting to hear from Dennis McKenna about the revised dates for his course on 'The Chemistry of the Amazon'.

In relation to our work here, based in Pucallpa, after a relatively quiet start to the year for the first part of January, we have had a very busy last two months. The highlights include:

• In February we welcomed four new volunteers, (which I imagine most of you read about in our newsletter) and since then we have a further two new volunteers working with us, one doing research for his Masters program in Norway on ayahuasca tourism and its effect on the Shipibos, and another helping us with communication. Increasingly, we are attracting high calibre, talented, committed volunteers.

• One of our new volunteers, Thomas Younger, is heading up our eco-social justice program. He is first talking to many indigenous leaders here about what the needs of the Shipibo communities are. At the same time, he and another colleague are working with a Shipibo film-maker to make a documentary about what is happening with respect to palm oil cultivation in a neraby Shipibo community. Palm oil cultivation is rapidly emerging as the latest threat to the Amazonian ecosystem and its indigenous peoples.

• Our work with young Shipibo women and girls has continued with a further five-day personal development workshop for teenage girls from the community of Paoyan. This is run in collaboration with the US-based non-profit, 'Girls for the World' and is the fourth year in succession we have successively run this program. Additionally, Denise VillaIva, a very talented Mexican volunteer working with us, ran a two-day workshop with mainly girls and two young men from the local urbal community of Bena Jema, using animations to explore themes from their everyday lives. You can read more about this on our blog here.

best wishes  Paul