Cool Earth in the field

At the start of its third year supporting Ashaninka communities in keeping loggers out of their Peruvian rainforest, one of the UK team attends an important meeting in the field.

Held at Cutivireni Community in late April, the meeting was called by TSIMI, the Ashaninka Bioclimatic Association to allocate funds to its first round of finance this year. Over the last 2 years, TSIMI has received significant capacity building in managing funds for the benefit of the wider community alongside technical assistance in establishing transparent accounting systems. TSIMI channels the money raised by UK charity Cool Earth to pay three Ashaninka communities for the environmental service of avoiding deforestation of their territory's extensive and biodiverse rainforests.

At the meeting, TSIMI allocated their investments in a number of pre-designed expenditure categories, which include education, health, emergency aid, help for the very poorest families in the community as well as investment and micro-finance for sustainable agro-forestry development and the implementation of a Rainforest Demonstration Centre for the dissemination of best practice in rainforest conservation and management.

Some of the specific expenditures agreed at the meeting include:

• Medical kits for each village (with supervision of contents and associated training from qualified staff based at Cutivireni Health Post)
• Office equipment (for TSIMI, the Rainforest Demonstration Centre and community use - includes solar panel, battery, solar controller, cabling, laptop and printer/scanner)
• Communications radio and microphone to replace TSIMI community coordinator's out-of-date and no longer functioning equipment
• Set of school sports kit 

Among other matters coordinated at the meeting, TSIMI organised environmental education sessions with teachers and pupils of the secondary school in Cutivireni, an accounts related capacity building workshop with TSIMI Treasurer and a wider community fishing day for the coming Thursday.

Cool Earth's presence was vocally appreciated by TSIMI and other members of the Cutivireni community. In turn, the charity congratulated the Ashaninka on 3 successful years of avoiding deforestation and the clear success of their capacity building and participatory planning process.

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