Success Stories

Helping the next generation of Rainforest Stewards understand how unique and valuable their role is in protecting the forest has always been a focus of our ethnoeducation programs in Colombia and Suriname. We would like to share a few of the success stories that have emerged from the creation of these programs.

Colombia

In the Colombian Eastern Andean Amazon, in the municipality of Yurayaco in the department of Caquetá, ACT helped to found and now helps to sustain an ethnoeducation school providing instruction to roughly 100 indigenous students, 5 to 18 years old, in a context where educational opportunities are few. While studying both standard and traditional subject matter, the students also are learning to become conservation leaders, with an emphasis on sustainable agriculture in harmony with their environment.

Suriname

In ACT’s Novices traditional education program, in four remote interior villages, Trio and Wayana indigenous children between the age of 8 and 16 learn from their elders and tribal shamans about the use of medicinal plants and botanical medicines, create traditional handicrafts, go on educational forest walks, and generally learn to care for their local environment. They learn about ongoing threats to their forests, and what is being done to address this at multiple levels. Beginning in 2008, a formal partnership with the local state-sponsored village public schools in the villages was solidified, incorporating visits by indigenous elders and healers to the public schools and parallel visits by the public school students to traditional school buildings established in each village. In the villages, the visits have been officially incorporated in the state school curriculum.

ACT has been able to continue and expand school excursions by students of the communities. Led by traditional medicine clinic staff and enjoying the participation of ACT-trained indigenous park rangers, they visit ecologically and culturally significant sites that aid in the students’ traditional education and give them a better understanding of the intrinsic value of their ancient cultures and the fragility of their local environment. The students participate in nature walks, play conservation-oriented games, identify medicinally important plants, and make traditional crafts from forest resources.

In 2007, ACT supported the construction and establishment of a new school in the village of Sipaliwini, which provides instruction for approximately 50 children from kindergarten to the third grade, some of whom are illiterate. Following negotiations with ACT, the Director of Education for the Interior announced that his ministry would recognize the Sipaliwini school as a dependency of the Kwamalasamutu state school, thereby assuring state support.