Help community efforts to protect Peruvian Forests

Our dedicated volunteer Charles continued to work in the communities of San Antonio and Calabaza through the end of August. Within those 4 weeks, he managed to help Eusebio, the community leaders, and other community members to finish the bathroom in the temporary hostel, and start setting up the volunteer house in San Antonio. As the first occupant of the volunteer house, Charles set up a small kitchen, complete with a gas stove and cooking pots and utensils. Besides building up infrastructure, Charles focused his attention on building trusting relationships with the community members. Since this project is relatively young, it is important for the community members to trust our organization, staff, and volunteers to ensure a long lasting, successful working relationship with them. Charles did this by engaging in informal conversations outside their homes or at the dinner tables, as families were eager to have him over. He also helped in the coffee harvest, which is the primary form of income for the people. Thanks to Charles’s patient and dedicated work in building relationships with the community members, the project will have even more community input for continued success in building a community-owned and managed ecotourism in the district.

Eusebio, along with Charles and Norma, our Lima based project coordinator, also had the opportunity to travel to a successful ecolodge a few hours from our project site. There, Eusebio, took notes on infrastructure, tourist activities, food, and other considerations needed for our project back in his home community. By seeing firsthand what is necessary for an ecotourism industry, Eusebio will be able to take his new knowledge and bring it back to his community and implement it for our project.

In other news, Architects Without Borders have completed preliminary plans for the volunteer house in San Antonio. The plans were sent to RP Peru staff, which shared the plans with the community. The community excitedly approved the plans. Architects Without Borders is now finishing up the complete plans, and once sent to the community, construction can begin to complete the volunteer house by the end of this year before raining season. Once the volunteer house is complete, longer-term volunteers will be able to stay in San Antonio and continue to work directly with the community members and hold workshops on English, environment, and hospitality for both adults and children. As I personally heard from the women in San Antonio when I was there this summer, they are very eager to have volunteer stay in the community to teach them English and cooking recipes. 

Thank you for your continued support of our project. This project would not be possible without your support! For more recent updates on each of our projects, please visit our website at: http://www.rainforestpartnership.org/category/news/projects

Links:

• Read more about this project on our website!

We are pleased to announce we have officially named our project in the Pampa Hermosa region of Peru. "Colibri Cloudforest" encompasses all the different facets of our work there, from the eco-lodge and volunteer house to workshops and English classes. “Colibri” means hummingbird in Spanish, and the new name will help attract birders to the area and the future ecolodge. The name will also help tourists to distinguish between the general region of Pampa Hermosa, and Rainforest Partnership’s project community within that region.

Work in Colibri Cloudforest is advancing well this summer. In the Calabaza community in the region of Pampa Hermosa, Peru, preparations for our hostel are making excellent progress. Our temporary hostel is taking shape as a home away from home for our expected guests. We have improved the distribution of beds and furniture and have installed amenities for the comfort of our guests: shower curtains, garbage cans, coat racks, tables and chairs. While some of these details are not typical within the community, we felt this would make a more comfortable stay for our guests. In addition our interns worked with the community to build an adobe oven and one of our interns brought a solar shower from the U.S.

We continue to work with Architects Without Borders on renovating the building for our volunteer house. We received the official analysis of the structure from an architect in Peru, so now the U.S.-based group can begin their designs.

Thank you for your continued support of our project. We will continue to update you throughout the summer on the exciting progress in Peru. For updates on each of our projects, please visit our website at: http://www.rainforestpartnership.org/category/news/projects.

In the last three months, much progress has been made on our project in Pampa Hermosa, Peru. Back in January our new Lima-based Pampa Hermosa project coordinator Norma traveled to the Pampa Hermosa project site with Angie, a Peruvian architect student, to gather information about the ecolodge site in Calabaza for the Austin chapter of Architects Without Borders. The information gathered included site boundaries, soil sample, and possible ecolodge location. Furthermore, Norma held a meeting with community members where they expressed their opinions for building materials and design layout. With this information, Architects Without Borders can begin to design an environmentally sound, community-minded ecolodge. Rainforest Partnerhsip has been and continues to be in constant contact with Architects Without Borders in the design process.

Other developments of models implementation of  project  management include setting up a volunteer program for the project site. With the groundwork laid out for the screening and training of new volunteers, Rainforest Partnership is beginning to recruit volunteers to go down to the site for a few weeks to share their skills with the community and to learn from them. Some tasks of volunteers would include setting up basic infrastructure for ecotourism, holding educational workshops depending on volunteer’s expertise, and documenting the needs and expectations of the community.  Other project management develops include establishing partnership relationships with local organizations. Norma has met with Swisscontact, who are interested in providing ecotourism workshops and setting up other forms of sustainable income generation. Norma has also set up workshops with the organization Manuela Ramos for female community members to create a tourist menu that incorporates local agricultural knowledge and customs.

Even though much has been accomplished, there is still more to be done to ready the community for ecotourism. Rainforest Partnership is in the process of helping the communities set up a formal profit sharing system for the money received from tourism to ensure fairness and equity in the communities. Furthermore, Gunnar Engblom from Kolibri Expeditions continues to bring in groups of birders to the stay in the hostel. The next step is to market to a wider audience, especially backpackers and other nature enthusiasts, to travel to this pristine, virtually untouched and unexplored area. It is truly a remarkable area for biodiversity that needs to be protected.

Thanks to your generous contributions the project can progress in a sustainable and community-minded way.