Support Indigenous Medicinal Gardens in the Amazon

First at all, our translator is on vacation, but we must go on (we hope this report is enough understandable).

On this new year we have 03 main goals (that are already runnig).

1) REPLICATE MEDICINAL GARDENS ON INSTITUTIONAL PLOTS.

The first new urban medicinal garden is in the house of Richard Soria, a wellknown shipibo healer, a Comando Matico member and a natural leader of the Shipibo People. Others main factors to support this garden are: His home is a non-official social center for shipibos with a lot of social traffic and cultural exchange, and he already has a medicinal garden, a humble one, which deserves support. By noy we had gave him materials to improve the garden such as planks, topsoil, sand, manure, tubes for watering, shade netting, and so on. During the next month, after the infrastructure improvement we will plant all the garden.

We had identified at least other 4 plots which deserves medicinal gardens for this 2022.

2) REPLICATE MEDICINAL GARDENS IN PUBLIC PARKS.

There is a projected garden in a public park in Pucallpa City. The last year we had and agreement with Pucallpa goverment, but for some governance issues the garden was delated, this week we will resume coordinations.

We will scale this goal on 2022, but the ultimate goal in mid-term is that local goverments in Ucayali cities grow medicinal plants in public parks and plant nurseries with their own technical and financial resources. We are just pushing them to change their policy about public parks.

3) GIVE MEDICINAL SEEDLINGS FOR FAMILY PLOTS

This goal sprouts right now: Just today we had a meeting with shipibo mothers artisans, after taking some pictures of them, they were roaming around our pilot medicinal garden and started to show real interest in this, chattering about medicinal plants in shipibo language, finally they asked for seedlings and we gave them some, just some. Now, we have a new commitment: to grow a lot of new seedlings for at least 20 mother artisan backyards in urban areas and for any shipibo family (in general urban shipibo families do not have enough money to buy pharmacy drugs).

What we consider a great achievement, the municipality of the province of Coronel Portillo, where we are located, has contacted us regarding technical support for the implementation of a public medicinal garden as soon as possible. We are now coordinating the specific resources they will provide; so far they offer their plant nursery to grow the seedlings, enough space in a centric public park, and the labor required for both planting and mainteinance. Meetings with the municipality's tourism office will also be held.

We are really excited because the local governments have the resources to invest in such projects, they just need the guidance and support that a team with the experience and knowledge such ours can provide. Sooner than we thought, we have managed to promote the incorporation of local natural medicine into public policies in our province.

On the other hand, thanks to donations like those from GlobalGiving, we have replaced recycled wooden planks for new, studier ones, and added better soil in all plant beds and pots in the pilot medicinal garden in our facilities. We are happy to see how the plants in our garden are starting to bloom, produce seeds and get stronger as rain season comes closer.