• Supervise and control the daily activities of the teenagers
• Coach them and give examples of good practice
• Teach teenagers from local communities
• Give them a more positive outlook for the future
• Enhance their professional abilities

The project’s approach is to improve the education of the Shuar and Achuar teenagers in the Amazonian Rain Forest in order to enhance their professional opportunities. Many of them have no or only limited access to school education and sometimes become vulnerable to drugs, alcohol and violence. Most of the parents are farmers and do not see the importance and necessity of sending their kids to school.

The responsibilities of the volunteers depend strongly on the person’s abilities. The focus lies in the fields of educating and monitoring the daily activities and health issues of the teenagers. Those activities include cleaning, washing, cooking, buying food, and doing sports or other spare time activities.

Additionally, volunteers are encouraged to accompany the students to school and visit their families. Twice a week there are special agricultural workshops in order to teach the teenagers how to maintain a little farm in an ecological way, while conserving the nature and harvesting. This is very useful and important when they go home to their families and communities to help with farming.

During spare time, volunteers are encouraged to do sports and outdoor activities while enjoying the great environment in the Amazon Rain Forest. The project can employ up to eight volunteers. The center also employs several professionals from different areas including teachers, psychologists, local managers, assistants for cultural and agricultural issues, cooks, and some other staff members.

• Volunteer house
• Fully equipped with bathrooms, kitchen and living room
• 3 meals per day

While you are volunteering you will be sharing a room in the volunteer house. The house is divided into two parts, each accommodating up to 8 volunteers. The two parts are each equipped with a bathroom, flush toilets, hot showers and a kitchen.

Staying at the volunteer house and volunteering in this project includes 3 meals per day. Food is cooked by local community members and usually volunteers share breakfast, lunchtime and dinner with local people or staff.

The foundation’s main objective is continuing to improve the situation and personal outlook of the Shuar teenagers. They focus on education in order to enhance their economic and political knowledge improving their possibilities on the labor market. The Shuar and Achuar are indigenous communities of Amazonian Rain Forest. They still apply many old traditions, use their own language and live through their culture everyday in life. There are about 40.000 Shuars still living in Ecuador.

Due to the bad economic situation of their parents, children often never have the opportunity to attend school. The project where you will volunteer at runs a camp with about 50 acres in the countryside. Here the children find a new home and share their room with a classmate. They eat, live and study in the camp. Currently, there are about 20 boys between 11 and 17 years old. They attend school at the public school of Sucua in the morning and conduct various tasks in the afternoon like studying, taking care of the camp’s animals and gardens, etc. On Saturdays, the boys have to participate in workshops or maintenance tasks at the camp then go to have fun swimming in the rivers and pools or hiking in the afternoon. On Sundays, the children usually go to the church then have a free afternoon.

Once or twice a month the boys go home to their communities to spend some time there. They should not loose contact with their families and traditions. Sometimes local staff or volunteers go with them.

Besides their education, the foundation also cares for social and familiar problems the Shuar face. Amongst those are poverty, neglected or orphaned children, prostitution, delinquency, violence and drugs.

Source: Google Maps

One time registration fee 75 USD.

• Accommodation
• 3 meals / day (breakfast, lunch, dinner)
• Orientation kit
• Local support
• 24h-Emergency Number
• Volunteer Work Placement
• Certificate of participation

• Flight
• Airport pick-up
• Medical Insurance
• Visa (if necesary)
• Local Travels