Preserve Amazon Rainforest
- Projects:
- 120
Since 1994, with generous donations by organizations and hundreds of individuals, the Yachana Foundation has purchased and protected over 4,300 acres of primary and secondary rainforest in the Ecuadorian Amazon. But buying rainforest is only part of the solution. Protecting and maintaining it are also vitally important. You can help preserve parts of the Amazon Rain forest through Yachana Foundation's Conservation Program. This program actively involves the participation of students from the Yachana Technical High School in the preservation process. In this very practical approach to conservation education, the students take what they have learned back to their families and farms. Your donation will help save the environment these rural families live in and help offset your carbon footprint by saving trees.
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The Need
At 1.2 percent annually, Ecuador's deforestation rate is three times higher than any other country in South America and six times higher than the global average. The combined effects of unmanaged logging, widespread oil exploitation, unsustainable agriculture, and a burgeoning population is destroying 342,500 acres of Ecuador's rainforest and extinguishing hundreds of species every year despite being declared as a protected forest by the Ministry of the Environment. While Yachana Foundation owns part of this protected rainforest, protection and maintenance of its rainforest are required on a continued basis and taxes have to be paid annually. Through this conservation program, your donation produces the funds to continue these operations and preserve valuable Amazon rain forests.
About Yachana Foundation
Partner since November, 2008
Since 1991, the Yachana Foundation, formally FUNEDESIN, and its projects have invested approximately 5.2 million dollars in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This investment of time and resources has underwritten many triumphs. One of its projects the Yachana Technical High School, is a non-traditional, regional boarding school with 80% indigenous students from five Amazonian provinces within Ecuador, representing four ethnic groups. Instruction is a practical, hands-on approach to learning, offering applicable education where few income-generation options exist. The Yachana Technical High School trains 81 indigenous and mestizo students in rural communities of Ecuador’s Amazon region and employs 16 staff members. The school is designed to be as close to self-sustaining as possible. The Yachana Foundation provides an extensive “campus” of 4,300 acres of land and infrastructure where the students study ecotourism, sustainable agriculture, forest and wildlife management and environmentally sustainable micro-enterprises. Some additional projects include launching Yachana Lodge - a world renowned geo-tourism location - in 1995, establishing Mondaña Medical Clinic in 1997 which offers the only full-time healthcare to over 8,000 Quichua indigenous people, and constructing 21 schools in impoverished communities throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon.