This project will help build sustainable livelihoods and conserve rainforests with six Bora and other native communities in the Peruvian Amazon by promoting planting, sustainable harvest and sale of value-added non-timber forest products. It will empower over 100 native artisans and woodsmen to create and market innovative fair-trade handicrafts and fragrant essential oils as alternatives to economic activities that degrade forests. Craft sales will also support community health and education.
Amazon forest loss is driving species to extinction, aggravating global warming, and robbing people of unique medicines, foods and other benefits. Cutting and burning forests is often more profitable than conserving them, so some native communities in northern Peru have illegally logged and grown coca and other cash-crops to escape poverty. They most want sustainable ways to improve their income, health and education that enhance forests, respect their culture, and strengthen their communities
This project will empower women artisans in six Amazon native communities in Peru to create and sell innovative handicrafts made with sustainably harvested chambira palm fiber and natural dyes. It will also train Bora men to produce fragrant essential oils by distilling copal tree resin and leaves from rosewood and other aromatic plants. Old fields will be planted with chambira and more than 1000 rosewood tree seedlings to provide a long-term supply of raw materials for making crafts and oils.
This project will generate sustainable income for over 100 native families by energizing their imagination, pride and traditional knowledge to create rare fragrances and unique crafts such as guitar straps woven with jungle snake patterns. They will learn new ways to protect their forest resources and rescue the rosewood tree for future generations. Communities will receive ongoing benefits as CACE returns 20% of its craft sales to support their chosen health, education and conservation needs.
When I hold a Bora handicraft, I see the woman who wove it, the plants she boiled to dye it, and her kids playing in the rain. You can't save the Amazon without caring about the people who live there.
- Campbell Plowden, CACE Executive Director & Project Leader
Total Funding Received to Date: $10,213
Remaining Goal to be Funded: $3,787
Total Funding Goal: $14,000
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
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