Partners

Organizations

Amazon Ecology Peru

Amazon Ecology is a non-governmental organization established in Peru in 2020.  Its staff now conducts our artisan training programs, reforestation and support activities with our community partners.

Garza Viva

Garza Viva is a company established in Peru in 2019 to buy crafts and sell crafts from our artisan partners.  It manages a store in Iquitos, seeks to expand craft sales to other businesses in Peru and exports crafts to the US and other countries.  

Communities

Ampiyacu River

We support artisan development in nine Bora, Huitoto, Ocaina and Yagua native communities in the Ampiyacu watershed in cooperation with the FECONA native federation. They make the widest diversity of crafts of all of our partners. Our project base in the area since 2009 has been the Bora village of Brillo Nuevo where we also did sustainable harvest studies on copal resin and cooperated with our NGO partner Camino Verde to plant, harvest and transform rosewood leaves and branches into essential oil.

Marañon and Yarapa Rivers

We began working with artisans from the campesino and Kukama villages of Amazonas, San Francisco, and Puerto Miguel in 2015. They excel at making a wide variety of woven birds and other animal ornaments. We regularly host artisan and communication workshops near Nauta with our NGO partner Minga Peru.

Tahuayo River

We have worked with artisans in the campesino village of Chino on the Tahuayo River since 2008. These artisans have led the way forming an effective association, sustainably managing their chambira palm resources, and selling their baskets and and other crafts to tourists and wholesale buyers. We began working with veteran artisans from Chino's neighbors Esperanza and Santa Cruz in 2023.

Ucayali River

We studied the ecology and sustainable harvest of copal resin at the Jenaro Herrera field station operated by Institute for Investigations of the Peruvian Amazon (IIAP) from 2006 to 2018.  Since 2007, we have also worked with a small but very talented group of artisans who have perfected their woven butterfly and other insect ornaments.  Their leader helps us train other artisans in many other communities. 

Napo River

We have worked with three Maijuna native communities in the region on an intermittent basis since 2009 to explore the commercial feasibility of copal resin harvest. We are now focused on building Maijuna artisan capacity to make woven animal ornaments in cooperation with our NGO partner OnePlanet and native federation FECONAMAI.

Funders

Alternatives to Violence Project

Conservation International

Global Giving Foundation

Glore Fund

Harrisburg Friends Meeting

Melza M and Frank Theodore Barr Foundation

New England Biolabs Foundation

Rufford Foundation

Sisters of Mercy - Caribbean, Central America, and South America

Creative Action Institute