International Justice Committee’s New Project

Save the People/Save the Rainforest!

Our 19-year-old has grown up! We began the Kenyan Education and AIDS (KEAP) Program, educating orphan and vulnerable Kenyan children, in 2004. Next year we will have only four children still in the program, and they will graduate within the next 2 years. When the final child graduates, KEAP will end.

So, we started looking for a new long term international mission about a year ago. This new mission came to us in the same way KEAP began. One of our member’s daughters brought us in contact a new opportunity.

Danica Novgorodoff visited the Cofán community in the rainforest of Ecuador in 2015. She was so taken with the people, the forest, and the opportunity to make a difference in the world, that she became a member of the board of the US based organization: Cofán Survival Fund.

As one of the oldest surviving indigenous cultures in Ecuador, the Cofán people have more than a million acres of land in the Amazonian rainforest. Beginning in the 1960s oil companies, mining industries, industrial farming, and the environmental disasters resulting from these encroachments are destroying much of their land and negatively impacting their health and way of life.

In September 2022 seven All People’s members and friends traveled to the Cofán territory to meet the people, learn more about their culture, and spend some time in the rainforest. We traveled by air to the capital Quito, and then 11 hours by bus to the river, and then about four hours by motorized canoe to the community of Zabalo, deep in the rainforest. During the five days in Zabalo we stayed in cabins and were able to spend time with the Cofán people. We had an ecotour consisting of a tour of the village, a hike in the rainforest and a canoe ride to a remote area for bird sightings and more. We learned so much about the Cofán, their culture and the forest

After we returned home, we shared what we had learned with the rest of the International Justice committee and decided, and the committee voted to move forward with the project and to invite the congregation to participate.

The greatest need identified by the Cofán Survival Fund is access to health care. While they technically have access to a national health care program for rural and under served people, The Cofán people struggle to access the program because they do not read or speak Spanish. We saw for ourselves how far they live from the nearest clinic, and how long it takes to get there.

In 2021 the Cofán Survival Fund initiated the Seguro Campesino Project to hire a health navigator to help Cofán families get enrolled in the national health care program. The health navigator also helps to arrange transportation, temporary housing, food, translation, and all the other things a family needs to access health care.

We have been asked to contribute to the Seguro Campesino Project to keep it running. We have set of goal of $20,000 per year to keep 80 families enrolled in the program. We are asking All Peoples and Friends to contribute $250 to support one family per year.

Many have asked about outcome measurement—what assurance will we have that our money will help the people? Although we do not have details worked out yet, we expect feedback from the program on a regular basis. Also, there is already a well-established organization doing this work.

We have learned from our experience with the KEAP program that regular visitation helps us see with our own eyes what is going on. We would like to see an annual group from All Peoples visiting the Cofán people. Ecuador is a lot closer than Kenya, accommodations are comfortable, the food is great and the canoes are motorized with padded seat and overhead covering. It was one of the most rewarding experiences of our lives to have been there.

If we can help the Cofán people maintain their health and lifestyle and continue to live the rainforest, they will be able to protect their land from destruction. you would like to be involved in this project, Contact us to get more information, and learn more about future trips and how to get involved. There are many ways to participate.

For more information: https://www.cofan.org/

Sheila Ward sward0111@gmail.com

Mary Goodwin mary_goodwin@gmail.com