The ACEER is partnering with the Amazon Herb Company to bring ACEER’s ¡AMIGOS! Environmental Education programs to rural villages along the Rio Pisqui and near Pulcallpa in Peru’s central rainforest. This expansion is made possible by a generous grant of $50,000 to ACEER by the Amazon Herb Company. Aura Murrieta, ACEER’s Director of Peru Programs is meeting with members of the native communities to assess their needs. Implementation of teacher training and provision of learning materials to all village schools is expected in time for the start of the new Peruvian school year later this spring.

John Easterling, Amazon Herb Company’s founder and CEO, has spent nearly 30 years in Amazonia. Through his vision and leadership, Amazon Herb Company has assisted the indigenous peoples of this region by:

• Sponsoring the formation of the Rio Pisqui Federation. This federation represents all of the natives along the isolated Pisqui River. As a united Federation these communities will be better able to protect and defend their land, way of life and traditional knowledge. They will also be able to better provide education for their children, safeguard their culture and right for self-determination. Together and collectively empowered, they will advocate for laws that favor native communities, as it pertains to social, economic and political issues.
• Assisting the 200 Shipibo inhabitants of the small village of Porvenir to secure legal ownership to 13,000 acres of land that sustains their way of life.
• Creating an ecological reserve near Yarinacocha, Peru, to protect it from logging and other development. The reserve contains a small camu-camu grove that is harvested twice a year. Ecologically harvesting herbs has produced a valuable new income source for the region.

“We’re excited by this new partnership between Amazon Herb Company and the ACEER,” noted ACEER President Dr. Roger Mustalish. “We value the confidence they have in ACEER; it is a testament to the good work ACEER does in villages and cities throughout the Peruvian Amazon,” he added. John Easterling agrees, “It is a great example of what can be achieved to promote conservation and protect indigenous rights, and is, as we like to say, beyond good business.”

To learn more about the Amazon Herb Company, visit them at http://aceer.amazonherb.net/.