| The Health Project | | Print | |
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HEALTH INITIATIVE AT TSURAKU  Tsukaru is a Shuar community founded in 1975, part of the Shuar Federation of approximately 40,000, which is centered in Morona Santiago Province in Amazonian Ecuador. There is paved road access to Centro Shuar Tsukaru, where the central village and 13 satellite communities, each up to five hours walk from the central village, has access to the health post and bilingual (Shuar/Spanish) primary and secondary schools. Young people are increasingly embracing Ecuadorian values and looking outside of the community for work and further educational opportunities.Local economic activities follow traditional subsistence patterns, including slash and burn agriculture, hunting and fishing. Shuar traditionally were semi-nomadic, but changes toward permanent settlement have created sanitary problems resulting from ineffective removal of human waste along with decreased agricultural productivity due to depleted soils in walking distance of permanent villages. Over the last few decades the destruction of forest habitats within and around the community has drastically reduced not only traditional access to protein, but also their big reserve of Mahogany forest. Mahogany is commercially extinct and becoming scarce throughout its biological range in Ecuador. Apart from agricultural products, Tsuraku produces indigenous artesanal items, but the does not have access to a market sufficient to profit much from them. Salaries for indigenous professors represent one of the best means for earning cash, but opportunities are very limited within the community. Major economic necessities include transportation, education medicines, purchase of agricultural tools and supplies, hunting and fishing implements, clothing, manufactured items such as televisions, refrigerators, cameras, cd players and food products such as sugar, oil, rice, etc.  The elderly of the community fall mainly outside of the market economy, yet they suffer from the absence of their children and grandchildren as these generations leave the community to pursue economic opportunity elsewhere.In a fundamental sense Shuar traditions have little intrinsic value outside of the community, so that the traditional knowledge and resources of the elderly are undervalued. An important aspect of our proposed work in Tsuraku revolves around a sense of community productivity especially among the elderly. At its core, this implicates conservation. It is important to understand how conservation of health and health resources, conservation of traditional values and knowledge systems, as well as conservation of natural resources all play a key role in the health of the community, and ultimately in the success and sustainability of the initiative. Great Wilderness and its Tsuraku project is an initiative with the overall goal of improving the health and quality of life of seniors from the Shuar indigenous community. The project will enable them to have locally accessible health service and serve as examples to other indigenous communities.
CONSERVATION INITIATIVE
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Amazon Community Reserve, Tsuraku, is a 4,500 hectare site communally owned by the local native Shuar group in the Pastaza Province in Amazonian Ecuador. The Reserves objectives are to provide development initiatives to the communities of the reserve, and help them conserve their environment. The reserve is focused on promoting sustainable environmental practices, especially among the Shuar people. One important focus of the reserve is Mahogany, a hardwood species that grows in abundance at this site and is commercially extinct and becoming scarce throughout its biological range in Ecuador.
