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"I am Achuar" - Collaborative English Programme

, , • 4 Employees
Education Management

"I am Achuar" is a collaborative English project based at Unidad Educativa Colegio Tuna, a high school in the Achuar territory of Amazonian Ecuador.Achuar land has experienced the repeated threat of incursion by oil companies, but many Achuar living in the Kapawi reserve strongly maintain that engaging in eco-tourism is one way they can work towards celebrating their heritage, as well as asserting authority over their land.In the 1990s, following a period of formative indigenous uprisings, Ecotourism began to flourish in Ecuador when NGOs collaborated with indigenous groups. Today the government is now promoting communitarian-tourism as a key industry in the National Development Plan, El Buen Vivir. However, in order to be able to control the rules of this engagement with tourists, corporations, investors, the tourism industry as a whole, and the outside world more generally, it is essential that the Achuar train their own professionals to run the ecotourism projects themselves.Determined to incorporate English language education into the school's Ecotourism curriculum, the directors of the school, leaders of the community, and a network of ex-volunteers work collaboratively to create a grassroots English Programme. We are not an NGO project, charity or private enterprise, rather this website serves as a means of connecting experienced and committed volunteer teachers to the school and the community.