Community Outreach
Assisting the Return of Self-Sustainability in the Amazon.

A rapidly growing number of jungle communities have lost their autonomous traditions and have become dependent on modern cultures medicine and in many cases food. With markets and even supermarkets in Iquitos, one need not keep their ancestors traditions to survive, at least not yet, that is. The Ayahuasca Foundation supports projects that encourage communities to embrace their cultural wisdom, and finds new ways to make the preservation of ancestral knowledge and tradition an economic benefit to future generations.

Community Centers will be built through money donated in public awareness projects, where students in the United States and Europe will raise money for the students of the Amazon Communities, so that they can build a community center. The community center will have it's own museum, remembering the history of the community, their ancestral culture. Local art will also be displayed and sold there, with the promise of creating a tourist program that also encourages self-sufficiency by making the traditions profitable.

Medicinal Gardens and Sustainable Plantations will be developed under the guidance of curanderos, who will also teach communities about the care of the plants, their harvest, and the use of medicinal plants rather than pharmaceuticals. Community members will be able to recieve care from the curanderos using natural medicine, to both help those that are ill and to strengthen the faith of the people in plant spirit medicine once again.

Cultural Volunteer Opportunities are being developed to create a mutually beneficial way for those interested in Amazon medicine to learn a tremendous amount directly from authentic curanderos, but they would also be helping communities to relearn the same wisdom. Indigenous culture retreats are also being designed.

The Foundation will support as many projects as possible to further the preservation of indigenous wisdom in the Amazon, and to protect the human right to practice natural medicine and to partake in ayahuasca ceremonies. We are interested in many programs that are intended to help the local communities around Iquitos, but we just don't have the funds yet to begin helping them. We will be listing these projects when the website is complete.