F A L L

2 0 1 4 / W I N T E R

2 0 1 5

the

Runa Foundation
Newsletter

Contents:
A Trail for Tea Lovers
Featured in major travel publication

The Naku Project

Learning from the people of the
Amazon about traditional medicine

Update from the

MacArthur Project

An update on forest management in

three local communities

Meet the Interns

Who has been working for Runa
Foundation this fall and winter?

Donate Here!

Traditional Medicine
and Guayusa in Peru
An Update from Rios Nete

Welcome to the team!

German Corado (left), Raine Donohue (center), and Carlos Tunay
(right) have all joined Runa Foundation in the past year. Runa
Foundation is very excited to have them working for us!

THE RUNA NEWSLETTER

FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

A Trail for Tea Lovers

By Alisa White

Runa Foundations newly developed Guayusa Trail has

recently garnered international attention. In their book, New
In Travel, Lonely Planet listed this trail for tea lovers as one
of 26 of the worlds hottest new experiences for 2015. The
article describes the cultural significance of guayusa to the
Kichwa people while noting its high caffeine and anti-oxidant
content. The Guayusa Trail itself includes a morning guayusa
ceremony with a Kichwa family, a guided tour of a chakra
where guayusa is grown and a visit to Runa Tarpunas factory
and experimental plots in Archidona. Runas factory is noted
as the only place in the world that turns the raw guayusa
into loose-leaf parcels ready for worldwide shipping.
Overall, this article will certainly draw eco-tourists, teaenthusiasts and adventurers alike to the beautiful Napo
Region of Ecuador. However, as people enjoy the experience
of Runas Guayusa Trail, they will also be promoting the fairtrade practices of Runa Tarpuna and protecting local
livelihoods and ecosystems. Its a perfect option for the
sustainabilityminded tourist!

The Naku Project

By Raine Donohue

Naku is a collaborative project between the Spara people

of Ecuador and Runa Foundations development experts
to unlock the healing powers of the Amazon. Naku is
located in the community of Llanchamacocha, an isolated
region of the rainforest where there are no roads and the
area is only accessible by plane, or a four-day walk from the closest city. There are only 575 Spara left
living in the Amazon, and their population is quickly dwindling. Additionally, the extractive economic
activities taking place in the Amazon are threatening their livelihoods, culture, knowledge, and
ancestral territory. For these reasons, the Spara have initiated an alternative development plan, based
on a community enterprise model, to preserve and share their culture with the global community. The
Spara people hold an immense amount of ancestral knowledge of medicinal plants and holistic living
practices. Sharing this millennia-old knowledge with the world will not only generate a new source of
income for their community, but also provide solutions to many of our modern global health problems
through the practice of traditional medicine. At a time in history where the rainforest and the
indigenous people are disappearing at an alarming rate, it is crucial to look for new value in these
systems in order to encourage the preservation of these landscapes and livelihoods.
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THE RUNA NEWSLETTER

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Update from the MacArthur Project

First, Runa Foundation is exited to announce
the hiring of our new forestry and agriculture
extension team: Efrain Alvarado, Hendry
Mamallacta and Leonides Narvaez. They are
working with Runa to help write and
implement integrated forest management and
investment plans for three pilot communities in
Napo, Ecuador. All three communities,
Mushullacta, Puni Kotona and Santa Rita, are
next to national protected areas or intact forest
regions and so they function as important buffer
zones. As part of this effort to create integrated
forest management plans, the field extension
team has implemented the baseline survey,
mapped degraded forest and pasture areas for
reforestation and rehabilitation and have
facilitated land use planning workshops within
their respective communities.

Amazon. As a follow up to this trip, field

extension agents are registering smallholders to
plant commercially valuable trees through
reforestation using incentives provided by
Ecuadors Ministry of Agriculture (MAGAP).
Runa has also worked to help smallholders in
Santa Rita begin to formalize and update land
titles by mapping out agricultural land. The
maps were presented to both the community
and MAGAPs land tenure department.
Meanwhile, in the community of Puni Kotona,
Hendry Mamallacta is working with local
timber harvesting to obtain data related to
logging extraction rates, species composition
and prices. This information will be used to
help the community better plan logging and
timber processing activities in order to improve
local livelihoods and conserve rare species.

Last month, Runa Country Director Ian

Cummins and the extension team traveled to
the Province of Esmeraldas to visit a
community run balsa operation operated by
Verde Canand. The team visited balsa
nurseries, plantations, harvesting operations
and a wood processing facility with the to assess
whether this model could be replicated in Napo.
While Ecuador is currently the worlds largest
producer of balsa, relatively little is grown in the

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Meet the Interns

Adrien Odetti (Fall 2015)

During my internship with Runa, my main task
was to GPS track trees, take pictures and collect
general facts about them.

Emilia Zanetta (Fall 2014)

When I took the internship with RUNA, it
was to live in the jungle and learn about
sustainable forest management, work with
indigenous communities and get away from
the concrete jungle for a while. I came here
with a lot of expectations of what I could
learn and do.

For this project I also lived with in the

Mushullacta community at the border
of a nature reserve. The time I spent
there is a memory Im surely never
going to forget and, even though it wasnt
always easy to live there, Im only able to recall
the great things.
My number one experience for sure was the
night I spend in the middle of the jungle,
sleeping on the floor, sheltered by a canvas. We
were way off from any human settlements and
the darkness seemed absolute. The noises on the
other hand were beyond imagination, for the
jungle truly never sleeps.

The first week was an adaptation period

getting to know a new place, people,
language, food, architecture, climate, and
rain. There are a lot of activities to do and
enjoy here. The different sceneries and places
are amazing and I found them great for
exploring and taking pictures.
Little by little, the activities with
RUNA came along. You have to
be prepared with a lot of ideas and
always have a back up plan, since
things don't always work as they are supposed
to. Thanks to this opportunity, I was able to
immerse myself in Ecuador and understand
the way Kichwa communities think and
relate with themselves and also people from
the outside world. Most of them are very
quiet and interested in environmental
protection. Runa Foundation is there to help
Kichwa communities protect the forests.

I fell in love with the jungle and with Ecuador all

together. I loved the slowness with which the
time passes and after a little time I managed to
totally go with the flow just one day or even
hour at a time. Even though I was only in
Ecuador for 3 months, it really changed my life
and Ill have to go back sooner rather than later.
Im missing it already so much it hurts.
Now Im back in Switzerland and working as a
nurse, what I finished training for before heading
to Ecuador. I enjoy my job and its great to be
finally done with education. Thank you very
much to Runa for making this possible and
looking forward to seeing you all again some
day!

Lindsay and Alisa with community

members in Santa Rita

Adrien enjoying the jungle

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THE RUNA NEWSLETTER

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Meet the Interns

Lindsay Saligman (Winter 2015)

Alli puncha! uka shuti Lindsay Saligman.
Kuna shituwa Santa Rita llaktapi kawsani
kanchis killara. Translation from Kichwa: Hello,
my name is Lindsay Saligman. I'm currently
living in Santa Rita for seven months.

Alisa White (Winter 2015)

My name is Alisa and I am working for Runa
as an Agricultural Economics intern this
winter. Over the course of my first two years
at Dartmouth College, I have developed a
particular passion for interconnection
between human and environmental welfare
and quantitative and
qualitative analysis. This
focus on interconnection
is what first drew me to
the organization. I was
and remain deeply
inspired by Runas goals
of both supporting local,
indigenous livelihoods
and promoting fair trade,
sustainable agriculture.

I am a Global Citizen Year fellow working with

Runa and have been living in the Kichwa
community of Santa Rita since September. In
Santa Rita, I spend most of my working time
teaching English at the school to kids ages 11 to
18 and younger kids that are interested. I spend
much of my free time talking to people in the
community in Kichwa and am proud to say that
after four months in the community I am able to
understand about 50% of kichwa conversation
and myself am able to freely converse on most
everyday subjects.
My main work with Runa
consists of making and
effectively distributing an
informative video about
the techniques Runa
Tarpuna has developed to
increase productivity in
growing guayusa.
Historically, most guayusa
farmers have grown for consumption only,
which means their cultivation techniques do not
focus on export or sale. Overall, I am passionate
about doing things that matter, thinking, and
learning foreign languages. I currently speak
Spanish, English, and Russian fluently as well as
French and Kichwa proficiently, and am hoping
to learn more languages at Columbia University,
where I will be starting as a freshman this fall. I
am grateful to have this opportunity to learn
about myself, international development,
Kichwa culture, and Ecuador as a whole.

With Runa, I have been able to better

understand forest management and
international development by working on
various projects. I have conducted statistics
and analysis for the MacArthur forest
management project, compiled the
Foundation newsletter and begun projects to
map the seasonality of crops in local
communities and help
families create weekly
budgets. In addition, I
enjoy speaking Spanish
and am an avid tea
drinker, so speaking
Spanish every day,
living in homestay for
three weeks and
making guayusa part of
my daily ritual has
been fantastic. Thanks
to Runa for this chance to engage with
sustainable development in Ecuador!

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THE RUNA NEWSLETTER

FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

Traditional Medicine and Guayusa in Peru

By Sydney Nilan
Runa Foundation and partner organization
Rios Nete have been busy in the Peruvian
Amazon. We are developing the worlds first
research center dedicated to the practice and
clinical research of traditional Amazonian plant
medicine. With doors set to open January 2016,
we have broken ground on the construction of
water, electrical and transportation
infrastructure. Located in the Huapo Valley, 40
minutes outside of Tarapoto in Perus San
Martin region, Rios Netes property has come
alive with over 100 varieties of indigenous trees
and plants, including medicinals, ornamentals,
and edibles. Our field team has installed 7
hectares of agroforestry and organic agricultural
plots, laying the foundations for Rios Nete to be
a fully self-sustaining clinic with not only

organic fruits, vegetables, and herbal medicines,

but also beautiful rainforest gardens for our
future staff and patients to enjoy.
In guayusa related news, Runa Foundation in
Peru has been awarded funding to carry out a
pilot project with local farmers and agricultural
cooperative Oro Verde. The Pilot Project will
work with 6 communities across San Martin to
study the social, ecological, and economic
viability of introducing new inclusive guayusa
value chains. As part of our wider Peruvian
guayusa adaptability study, we are also working
with local partner Reforesta Peru to carry out a
study for improved guayusa propagation
technology which could revolutionize the way
that guayusa seedlings are produced in the
future.

THE RUNA NEWSLETTER

FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

Want to learn more?

To learn more about Runa Foundations mission, the work of the
Foundation, and about internships with Foundation, please
check out our website at www.fundacionruna.org. If you have
any questions, comments or suggestions about this newsletter or
its content, do not hesitate to contact volunteer@runa.org.

Donate Here!
Runa Foundation
Archidona Office
1/2km Rukullacta
Archidona, Napo, Ecuador
Phone: 062889099/084354162
Program Manager: Lindsay McGeehon,
volunteer@runa.org

Newsletter edited and organized by Alisa White