Farmacia Viva is a community-driven project to create a medicinal forest botanical garden in the Shipibo community of Paoyhan, with the goals of increasing local access to and knowledge about medicinal plants, restoring the local ecosystem, and improving community health. This project also aims to create opportunities for the community to generate sustainable incomes through eco-tourism, as well as selling commercially important medicinal plants produced in the garden.
It is estimated that up to 80% of people living in Paoyhan suffer from chronic illness due to poor environmental health, lack of access to healthcare, and few economic opportunities. Furthermore, due to deforestation, harvest pressure, and other ecological changes, many important medicinal plant species have become rare or are no longer available to the community. Thus, young people often do not learn the uses and management of medicinal plants that are effective for treating ailments.
Farmacia Viva restores forest biodiversity with useful medicinal trees and plants that are important for traditional healthcare practices, and revitalizes knowledge about medicinal plants and forest management by partnering with primary and secondary schools. It also improves healthcare and access to medicinal plant treatments by working with the local health post and traditional healers. Lastly it provides capacity-building and economic development opportunities for the people of Paoyhan.
Currently working with 5000 Shipibos, our goal is to effectively partner with the whole Shipibo nation (35,000 people) to co-create a web of healthy, vibrant communities that work symbiotically with the forest they depend on. Linked by permaculture impact centers, communities will pair landscape regeneration with entrepreneurship to create right-livelihood opportunities that cultivate awareness and sovereignty - growing sustainable economies, revitalizing culture, and educating for resilience.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
