The connection between human and environmental health suggests the importance of linking conservation work to health work, and healthcare to environmental protection. Project ASRI provides healthcare as an incentive to protect vital natural resources. Patients receive quality care and may use non-cash means like, seedlings, goat manure, and organic farming work, as payment. The payments are then used to reforest devastated rainforest. Healthy People. Healthy Forests. Healthy Planet.
In this remote area of Borneo, deforestation imperils orangutans and local people alike in a linked cycle of poverty and poor health. Health problems are serious; high quality, low cost medical care is not available locally, and illegal logging represents one of the few means of cash income, necessary to cover medical costs. Poor health drives local people into debt, desperation drives illegal logging, and the destruction of the forest plunges villagers into greater poverty and poor health.
We provide healthcare and conservation education to a community of more than 60,000. In exchange, the community agrees to stop illegal logging and protect the global treasure of Gunang Palung, home of many endangered rainforest species.
Through affordable healthcare, conservation education and reforestation, we will reduce the human mortality rates in local villages and medical payment related poverty in the region will decline. The Health In Harmony model can be replicated all over the world - wherever natural resources are threatened by communities' self-preservation needs. By partnering with forest communities, we can bring endangered habitats back to health.
What sets this remarkable initiative apart is its holistic approach: the empowering, participatory way it integrates primary health needs of local population with environmental needs...
- David Werner, Author, "Where There Is No Doctor"
Total Funding Received to Date: $10,315
Remaining Goal to be Funded: $0
Total Funding Goal: $10,000
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
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OR,
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http://www.healthinharmony.org
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