HEALTH INITIATIVE AT TSURAKU

Tsukaru is a Shuar community founded in 1975, part of the Shuar Federation of approximately 40,000, which is centered in Morona Santiago Province in Amazonian Ecuador. There is paved road access to Centro Shuar Tsukaru, where the central village and 13 satellite communities, each up to five hours walk from the central village, has access to the health post and bilingual (Shuar/Spanish) primary and secondary schools. Young people are increasingly embracing Ecuadorian values and looking outside of the community for work and further educational opportunities.
 
Local economic activities follow traditional subsistence patterns, including slash and burn agriculture, hunting and fishing. Shuar traditionally were semi-nomadic, but changes toward permanent settlement have created sanitary problems resulting from ineffective removal of human waste along with decreased agricultural productivity due to depleted soils in walking distance of permanent villages.
 
Over the last few decades the destruction of forest habitats within and around the community has drastically reduced not only traditional access to protein, but also their big reserve of Mahogany forest. Mahogany is commercially extinct and becoming scarce throughout its biological range in Ecuador.
 
Apart from agricultural products, Tsuraku produces indigenous artesanal items, but the does not have access to a market sufficient to profit much from them. Salaries for indigenous professors represent one of the best means for earning cash, but opportunities are very limited within the community. Major economic necessities include transportation, education medicines, purchase of agricultural tools and supplies, hunting and fishing implements, clothing, manufactured items such as televisions, refrigerators, cameras, cd players and food products such as sugar, oil, rice, etc.
 
The elderly of the community fall mainly outside of the market economy, yet they suffer from the absence of their children and grandchildren as these generations leave the community to pursue economic opportunity elsewhere.
 
In a fundamental sense Shuar traditions have little intrinsic value outside of the community, so that the traditional knowledge and resources of the elderly are undervalued. An important aspect of our proposed work in Tsuraku revolves around a sense of community productivity especially among the elderly. At its core, this implicates conservation.
 
It is important to understand how conservation of health and health resources, conservation of traditional values and knowledge systems, as well as conservation of natural  resources all play a key role in the health of the community, and ultimately in the success and sustainability of the initiative.
 
Great Wilderness and its Tsuraku project is an initiative with the overall goal of improving the health and quality of life of seniors from the Shuar indigenous community. The project will enable them to have locally accessible health service and serve as examples to other indigenous communities.

CONSERVATION INITIATIVE

Amazon Community Reserve, Tsuraku, is a 4,500 hectare site communally owned by the local native Shuar group in the Pastaza Province in Amazonian Ecuador. The Reserve’s objectives are to provide development initiatives to the communities of the reserve, and help them conserve their environment. The reserve is focused on promoting sustainable environmental practices, especially among the Shuar people. One important focus of the reserve is Mahogany, a hardwood species that grows in abundance at this site and is commercially extinct and becoming scarce throughout its biological range in Ecuador.

Projects and Activities: Infrastructure enhancement inside the Reserve.
• EcoMadera project has the aim of improve technology for sustainable timber extraction
  and create possibilities for fair trade.
• Biodiversity studies (transects establishment)
• Mapping of endangered plant species, such as mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla).
• Farm and forest cover mapping for Ahuano (Swietenia macrophylla) studies.
• Taylor guitars (Techniques enhancement for timber extraction and commercialization).
• Environmental Education in Tsantsa High School.
• Reforestation in one communitarian hectare.
• Ecological trail at Tsantsa High School.
• Medicinal and native plants garden development
• English teaching at the neighboring schools (Uwijint).
• Waste managing.
• Fish farming with native species.

Click here to volunteer in Tsuraku

A Community Health Project in the Mache Chindul Ecological Reserve

by Peter Cook

This proposal is for the implementation of a public health project in the rural communities of the Mache Chindul Ecological Reserve, in Esmeraldas Province, Ecuador, which is part of the Choco-Manabi Bioregion. I am applying for the C-14 Grant on the part of FONMSOEAM, a nonprofit federation of black and mestizo small-scale cocoa farmers from the Southwest of Esmeraldas Province, Ecuador. FONMSOEAM was created in the year 2000 and is currently constituted by over 300 members who comprise over 20 different communities in and around 120,000 hectares of primary virgin forest within this ecological reserve. FONMSOEAM has as its purpose the following objectives: to help connect its members to the international cocoa market in order for them to receive a better price for their product, to help its members receive and maintain organic and fair-trade certifications, to provide technical and environmental training to its members to grow their product more efficiently and environmentally-friendly, and to diffuse the money gained from the sale of cocoa into social projects within the communities that have to do with themes of public health, gender equality, education, and environmental awareness. It is important to note that the conservation of the biodiversity in this region is inextricably tied with the improvement of the quality of life of the people that live on these lands.

FONMSOEAM is currently receiving institutional support from Great Wilderness (www.greatwilderness.org), an American environmental conservation non-profit whose goal is to improve the quality of life of the members of the rural communities of FONMSOEAM. I am working as Great Wilderness’ project manager here at FONMSOEAM, organizing, among other things, environmental education seminars with the directors of the organization. With the improvement of the socio-economic conditions of the people that live in this incredibly biologically important zone, it is hoped that the people will be able to better use their resources to preserve, protect, and maintain their land and the surrounding forests.

To that end, the $50,000 grant from C-14 would be used to create a self-sustaining public health initiative within the communities. Each community would elect a public health promoter (capacitating 30 community health promoters overall), to receive training in the detection and prevention of simple, but potentially disastrous medical complications such as diarrhea, malaria, and basic infections. Community health posts will be established in all of the satellite communities, and supplied with essential medical equipment and supplies to screen for a number of priority health problems that affect children, women and elderly populations in rural Esmeraldas to a disproportionate degree. In addition, the Central Medical Center in Tonchigue, Ecuador, will serve as a focal point for the training and evaluation of the health promoters, and for community support and production of educational materials. It will also serve as a node for information exchange and the flow of resources to and from the Regional Ministry of Health. In addition, potable water filters would be installed in a few trial communities to begin implementation of a community-based potable water program. While the direct beneficiaries of this project would be around 300 people (the members of FONMSOEAM), indirectly this project could benefit over 1500 people, when considering the families of the members, and other non-affiliated people who live within the Mache Chindul who could benefit from the diffusion of health-related education within the reserve.

The southwestern part of Esmeraldas Province is one of the poorest regions in the country of Ecuador. The people that live in the zones that this project would target have an average yearly income of $670, far below the national per capita income of $1280. In comparison to the rest of the country, the people of the Mache Chindul have more than twice the rate of infant mortality (73 out of every 100,00 live births do not live past the age of 5 years old), and its population is growing at more than double the rate of the rest of the country. More than 60% of the rural populations of this province do not have access to such basic services as electricity, potable water, and sanitation facilities, and there are over 150,000 people in this region who are regularly exposed to tropical parasites and other potentially deadly diseases such as cholera and hepatitis.

Despite a favorable regulatory environment toward protecting and promoting the health of the indigenous populations, problems still persist, and many basic health needs in the indigenous communities remain unmet. It could be said that this region of Esmeraldas Province is largely disconnected from the rest of the country economically, and has not been integrated successfully in the process of development that other areas of the country have enjoyed over the last few decades. It is for this reason that the C-14 grant could be put to great use in an area where international assistance is needed most.