The End of an Era

After over 6 years of intensive research and community development work in and around the Yachana Reserve, GVI Amazon is coming to a close. We have finished our final research project (look forward to our Road Effects paper, coming soon!) and are handing over the project to our partner, The Yachana Foundation. They will continue to maintain and monitor the reserve, using it as an hands-on science education center for students -- we're very excited to see what fabulous things this next generation of scientists find! For more detail on GVI Amazon's closure, and our accomplishments over the years, please read on...
GVI Amazon Closure Statement

Friday, November 18, 2011

CHARITABLE TRUST ACTION CENTER

CHALLENGE24: Sneak Peek #1!

Thanks to all you generous supporters out there, we had a great start to our fundraising this past week, and are almost halfway to our goal for this Challenge!!!

A HUGE thank you to the talented & generous model, athlete & WWE champ Eve Torres, who is donating signed 8x10 photos to anyone donating over $20 -- see www.EveTorres.com for details. Thanks Eve!

For those of you who don't know yet, all donations -- through our JustGiving site or though GlobalGiving for U.S. donors -- go towards our GVI Charitable Trust project of Rural Education in the Amazon. We'll be supporting local schools where our volunteers teach, and also the communities where our interns work. In fact, we've just spoked to the coordinators at the new high school in the Huaorani (indigenous Ecuadorian tribe) community, and have committed to supporting some of their exciting education projects to promote conservation and preserve Huaorani culture, including an encyclopedic field guide on animals of the region that will also Huaorani beliefs & mythology, for use by the community, produced by the Huaorani students themselves!

For those of you who already donated, thank you so much, from all of us here in the Amazon, and please help us to continue spreading the word so we don't hit that 2nd week slump so common to fundraising online! Tell your friends, share it on Facebook, help us keep the donations flowing -- the more we can raise, the more projects we can support!

AND... just for being so great and supporting us, we thought we'd share just a little tidbit of what's to come in CHALLENGE24: THE AMAZON!

How are your machete skills? Can you weave sticks with a liana in less than 10 min? Do you even know what a liana is??

Let's just say we hope all our volunteers meant it when they said they were good swimmers, 'cause Challenge#3 is the dreaded Raft Challenge! 2 barrels, 2 life jackets, 1 machete -- first team to make it across the waterhole wins! Field Staffer Phil Brown says the boys' team has this one in the bag.... what do YOU think? (See below for a the boys' raft attempt during the last Challenge, and then tell me what you think!) Place your bets now by donating at https://www.justgiving.com/2nd-Official-GVI-Amazon-24-Hour-Survey-Challenge or http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/education-for-rural-amazon-communities/team/ (for U.S. donors). Thanks for your support!





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