Overview
Journey to Peru’s Andean-Amazon region to learn firsthand about empowerment efforts to restore the environment and create right livelihoods for indigenous and mestizo farmers that are also good for the earth, while regenerating ancestral practices. Students contribute to local communities through service learning with Oro Verde, a successful organic fair traded coffee producing cooperative which promotes agricultural biodiversity, environmental responsibility, sustainability, and cultural regeneration. 

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Program Highlights
	Explore the mix of Shamanism, cooperative organizing and native practices and crafts that sustain indigenous High Amazonian culture and leads to the health and sustainability of the landscape and of the human community
	Visit sites of cultural and ecological importance, such as the sacred Awashiyacu Waterfalls and the Takiwasi center for the shamanistic treatment of drug addiction
	Service Learning: Give back to the local community by helping in coffee production and reforestation efforts
	Post-program possibility of internships with Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee and other US fair trade coffee roasters

Course Topics
	Indigenous Culture and Agriculture
	Shamanism
	Community Building & Cooperative Management
	Biodiversity Regeneration & Reforestation Efforts
	Spanish & Quechua (Spanish conversational abilities preferred but not required)

Academic Credit
Earn 4 transferable credits through the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Anthro 396K: Fair Trade & Bio-cultural Regeneration in the High Amazon

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Faculty

Frédérique Apffel-Marglin
Ph.D., Anthropology Brandeis University
Professor Emerita at Smith College, Apffel-Marglin has been working with non-governmental organizations in Peru and Bolivia since 1994. She is director and founder of this program.

Kalidas Shetty
Ph.D., Microbiology
M.S. Bacteriology, University of Idaho, Moscow
Professor of Food Science at UMass Amherst, Shetty has published widely on issues including the improvement of Food Technologies, Combatting Global Diet and Environment-Linked Chronic Diseases, and Food Diversity and Indigenous Food Systems as they relate to sustianable community development.

Noah Enelow
Ph.D. cand. and M.A. Economics, UMass Amherst
B.A., Literature, Yale University
A recent Fulbright recipient to conduct research on the economics of the Peruvian coffee sector, Enelow’s is a frequent writer and activist on Fair Trade issues.

Lena Galvez Ranilla

Ph.D. cand. and M.A. Food Science, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Graduate Fellow at UMass Amherst

Additionally, a wide range of guests from national and community organizations as well as Quechua-Lamista elders offer lectures and seminars.

What Alumni are Saying

“Awesome– this program puts learning into context through experience. I feel conscious of the world around me in every sense, not just intellectually, but physically, spiritually, and culturally. This course makes you step back from egotism, anthropocentrism and humbles you... You cannot get this kind of experience anwhere else.”

“My world view has been altered; shaken in a profound way that makes me consider the ideology underlying my perceptions, actions and decisions.”

"The program more than exceeded my expectations! What a wonderful way to learn. This knowledge will stay with me forever unlike many things that are drummed into us but soon forgotten. This program has changed my life. It has helped me to clear my vision of the world."

"The experiential learning has allowed me to be an active participant rather than a passive observer of the other. It further implanted in me the belief in connections between humans and nature – I better understand the wholeness of the world."