For six weeks, volunteers from Nourish International at the University of New Mexico (UNM) will team up with Project Amazonas, a Peruvian non-profit organization dedicated to serving the communities and natural environment of the Amazon Rainforest, and local Peruvian communities in the Loreto region to continue working on the construction of a health clinic on the Rio Orosa. This clinic is essential because the nearest government-run health clinic lacks basic supplies and is often inaccessible for long periods of time due to the variability of river levels in the area. This clinic will serve approximately 1500 people in nine communities (Comandancia, Santo Tomas, Nuevo Israel, Santa Ursula, Puerto Fujimori, Santa Rosa, San Pedro de Orosa, Pobre Alegre, and Nuevo Paucarillo) in one of the most remote and isolated regions on the planet.

Project Amazonas began working with indigenous communities along the Orosa River in 1994. In recent years, they have collaboratively secured land and drawn up the blueprints for the health clinic which will be built this summer. The local communities will provide some building materials as well as the land, transport, and labor. The money our Nourish Chapter raises will help fund materials for clinic construction as well as medical supplies. Your donation funds essential project materials and not participant travel or living expenses. The UNM students will work alongside community members to construct the clinic. Once completed, the clinic will be owned and maintained by the community.

This project continues the work started by Nourish at UNM last year. During summer 2012, Nourish UNM, Project Amazonas, and local community members cleared, leveled, and prepared the site for construction. This year actual construction will begin. Last year, we conducted a health education program and rural health survey in order to identify the communities’ various health needs and concerns. This information will be used to ensure that the clinic is an effective facility in improving the health and general living conditions of the local peoples once completed. We hope that these initiatives will pave the way for future health programs in the region and future projects in similar rural areas of Peru.

What is Nourish International?

Nourish International is a student organization taking college campuses by storm. Founded in 2003 at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Nourish has spread to 28 Chapters and over 500 students. We strive to both engage students and empower communities to make a lasting impact on extreme global poverty. Throughout the school year, students run ventures to raise money to fund community development projects in poverty-stricken communities abroad.

Our unique model of collaboration between students, locally-based organizations, and communities is essential to the success of our projects. Nourish partners with communities who lack the necessary funds and resources for development projects but who have the entrepreneurial vision to make a lasting impact on extreme global poverty. Our role is not to act as a project manager, but as a catalyst to help accelerate change.

The UNM Chapter was founded in the fall of 2010. Since then, our Chapter has sent students and funds to 3 projects in Nicaragua, Ghana, and Peru. Our project participants have repaired and replaced inadequate roofs in Granada, Nicaragua, constructed a center to keep young mothers off the streets in Accra, Ghana, and begun construction on a clinic to serve rural communities along the Rio Orosa in Peru. All of our projects have been successful, and we hope to repeat this success with Project Amazonas in 2013.

“We believe you cannot save the Amazon Rainforest while ignoring its people, nor can you serve the people while ignoring the forest.” – Project Amazonas