Sustainability & Education Center Update

A year to embrace change!  

EKOAMAZON has always sought to support health and education in the Peruvian Amazon by listening to the communities we serve and learning from their creativity, resourcefulness, and resilience. Over the years, we have also learned an important question: What does “helping” really mean, and who benefits?

For several years, EKOAMAZON helped sustain the Sustainability and Education Center (SEC) near Palmeras II and its branch in Sapo Playa. Together, they provided hundreds of children with access to more than 7,100 books, computers, musical instruments, chess sets, games, crafts, and science resources.

Then COVID-19 changed everything.

With the Centers no longer able to operate as they had before, we paused and reconsidered how these resources could have the greatest impact. Rather than holding on to what had been built, we chose to put the resources into the hands of the communities best positioned to use them.

Resources from the SEC were redistributed to several communities. Palmeras II used materials from the existing Center to create a new Yagua Library and Museum. Resources went to Manati to strengthen its school library and to Indiana to support a new community library. Music and chess resources were placed in the hands of Fernando Saavedra to help launch a youth program in Iquitos.

Perhaps the most important part of this transition was that these communities would take responsibility for their own Centers and resources. EKOAMAZON would step back, remaining connected as a partner rather than directing the work.

Letting go was difficult. These Centers had meant so much to so many. But the experience reminded us of something the Amazon teaches again and again: you never know what you will find around the next bend, yet you trust that you will find what you need.

What began as a difficult consequence of the pandemic became a new beginning—allowing the fruits of years of work to spread farther into the region and placing greater trust in the people who know their communities best.

Nothing was lost. It simply found new life.

We wish you happy, healthy, heartfelt holidays,

Ron, Nancy & the EKOAMAZON team