What is your profession and title?

Executive Director

What is your ADR experience? (trainings and education)

Working with the Indigenous Kichwa community in the Amazon rain forest. After the intervention, this community was capable of getting rid of 4 mining companies without violence.

What are you hoping to get from ADRhub.com

Building a network to address common challenges

Do you/your company have a website?

http://bridgeamericaparentcenter.org

What else do you want to tell the ADRhub.com community (what you are up to, what you would like to do in ADR, etc.)

World Dignity University Initiative: Co-creating Sustainability in the Amazon Rainforest with the Kichwa community

Introduction: This initiative aims to build upon and strengthen the members of the Kichwa community to be leaders of sustainable forest management in their region, inspiring others to follow in their footsteps. This initiative is designed in three stages: 1) Survey of the land, giving the Kichwua community the legal rights to own their lands; 2) Eco-tourism and Natural Medicine initiative; giving the Kichwua community a livelihood; and 3) World Dignity University (WDU) to establish a branch at the Kichwua communities. This sustainable way of preserving the rainforest is through the entrustment of the Kichwua community. Currently, the Constitution of Ecuador protects indigenous people, the Amazon rainforest and their rights. But, unfortunately these indigenous populations do not know how to interact with the current system in order to preserve the Amazon rain forest.

Why: Currently indigenous communities in the rain forest are experiencing the forces of globalization by the intrusion of illegal mining and logging companies in their territories. Corporations illegally go into the Amazon rain forest and take its resources; and the livelihood of these indigenous communities is destroyed.

Who: Under the leadership of Principal Researcher Mariana Vergara, scholars and practitioners from WDU to support indigenous community in a pilot to co-create a sustainable intervention to protect the Amazon rain forest.

What: We are reaching out to you as part our Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach. We would like to exercise action reflection collaborative inquiry with you. In this way, you can guide us from your perspective about how it would be possible to develop this initiative.

How: As argued by Heron and Reason (1997, p. 283) “having a critical consciousness about our knowing necessarily includes shared experience, dialogue, feedback, and exchange with others.” Through action reflection collaborative inquiry, we are looking for ways to identify how to develop this initiative. This type of collaborative action inquiry is co-inquiry.
In order to deal with the mental demands of modern life, adults thinking needs to continue to evolve through higher level of consciousness. All of us (indigenous, scholars, students, and practitioners) to co-create a sustainable mechanism to protect the environment with the main goal of building a belt around the Amazon rain forest.

Where: In the Ecuadorian rain forest, this belt will begin with a pilot with Indigenous communities.

When: In July 2009 this intervention began at an emergency community meeting due to the intrusion of an illegal mining company in Rio Blanco. At this meeting, we applied action reflection collaboration inquiry with the Kichwa community of Rio Blanco; as a result by July 2010 this indigenous community has built a road to provide access for tourists and they expulsed 4 illegal mining companies. Currently, we are developing a manual to be distributed to other indigenous communities in the area as a way to protect the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador.

Outcome: This project will provide a sustainable way to preserve the rainforest from the threats posted by unauthorized mining and lumber companies; while entrusting and promoting financial stability among indigenous populations living in the Amazon.
For more information please contact mariana.vergara@tc.columbia.edu