OUR MISSION

Amazon Partnerships Foundation empowers indigenous Kichwa communities that value environmental stewardship through expression of their nature-based culture. We provide small grants and project management training for projects designed and implemented by communities. Through the exchange of ideas between Kichwa and Western traditions, we envision a new awareness for sustainable living based on equality among people in harmony with the natural world.

OUR APPROACH

The Kichwa people, the largest indigenous group in the Ecuadorian Amazon, come from a culture that values environmental stewardship.

Yet large scale environmental destruction due to oil extraction, clear cutting, and mining has forced the Kichwa people to abandon traditional, sustainable ways of living off the land. Over the years, the Kichwa people, who have faced intense discrimination, have become dependent on outside assistance to survive. Many have lost sight of the enormous contribution their culture made to the survival of the rainforest.

But now things are changing.

Kichwa communities want to find new ways, rooted in their traditional values, to protect their environment and celebrate their culture. We empower them by providing grants of up to $2,000 for projects that communities design and implement themselves.

More than just financial support, we also provide grassroots training valued at $6,000 to help communities develop skills to manage their projects and share their experience with their neighbors.

The communities we partner with take ownership of their projects and responsibility for the results—they submit funding proposals, design and implement project plans, and measure their own data.

We are coaches and partners in the process, but from start to finish, the projects belong to them.

OUR HISTORY

Conventional wisdom in the Ecuadorian Amazon, often shared by mestizos, foreigners, and indigenous people alike, says that indigenous communities are not capable of managing their own money, projects, or destiny. Working for several years for a community health organization in Napo Province, Ecuador, Mary Fifield met a number of Kichwa communities that did not fit this stereotype. They were eager to come up with their own solutions, and with support were willing to try to realize their plans. To help them achieve their goals, she developed a grant-making model for health projects and soon discovered that communities wanted the same support to protect the rainforest, promote their traditional culture, and provide for their families.

With the global environmental crisis growing ever more urgent and the results from the grant-making model showing promise, she began Amazon Partnerships Foundation in late 2008. Believing in the approach of empowering people through genuine partnership, not paternalism, Stella Klemperer, Rahul Joshi, and Natalia Santillan joined her as founding board members. Since then, our board has grown to ten Ecuadorians and North Americans committed to our values and vision.

To learn more, Download "Getting to Know Amazon Partnerships Foundation."