3 years of BCC and the SËRA Foundation: A Recap
2023 marks the third year that Big Canopy Campout have supported the SËRA Foundation with our yearly fundraising. By the end of this year we anticipate the Siekoya Remolino community, which SËRA represents, to be in a position where they can begin to sustain themselves financially against the encroaching pressures put upon them by oil and palm oil industries.
At such a significant time we thought we’d do a recap on these past years through the eyes of BCC. Looking at how our relationship to SËRA Foundation has strengthened and appreciate how, during this time, our fantastic BCC community has provided the fundraising leading up to our ambitious goals of 2023.
Perihon Elagage tree climbing team all kitted out in their new BCC SËRA SIP trousers!
The connection between BCC and the SËRA Foundation began in January 2021 when Rebecca, on the search for a new campaign to support, went on a deep dive into crowdfunding one evening and stumbled upon an article by Bethany Pitts, activist and writer, who has worked with indigenous communities in Ecuador for the past decade. The article spoke of the Siekopai, and their endeavour to retain their land and culture, within which were links to videos created by Jimmy Piaguage, a member and key spokesperson for the SËRA foundation, which showcased the community’s vast knowledge of medicinal plants.
With his videos, Jimmy has tasked himself with preserving the community’s ancestral knowledge on a digital format, in response to the ever dwindling population of Siekopai elders.
Rebecca, being an avid herbalist, was enthralled by this community and their connection to their surrounding environment.
The Siekopai Nationality are renowned for their medicinal plant knowledge and until the work of Jimmy & Ribaldo Piaguage passed all information on through spoken word.
Further discussions led to agreement that the SËRA Foundation was the perfect organisation to partner up with, being a grassroots group with a clear and genuine goal; to preserve their community’s rich culture and ancestral wisdom, and to become financially independent to keep their land in the hands of their people for generations to come. Bethany was a great help in making this a reality, already being deeply involved with the SËRA Foundation, and has been invaluable to us ever since. You can read her original article that brought us all together.
While these initial steps of contact were being made, some exciting plans were beginning to take shape for the SËRA Foundation and with sufficient funding they could make meaningful steps to making these plans a reality. Their main goal was to establish a forest school where the knowledge of their ancestors can be passed down to their youth. By intertwining this with scientific knowledge, such a school would ensure the emergence of a well-informed generation, with a true sense of value for their land and heritage.
The first step towards this goal was to organise a tour, upon which 8 Siekopai youths travelled to visit two inspiring projects; the Pambiliño Forest School, and the indigenous Kichwa community of the Sarayaku. The Pambiliño Forest School is an incredible project that places the forest as the central source of knowledge, truly a place of inspiration for the Siekopai given their aspirations of setting up a forest school of their own. During our first year of working with the SËRA Foundation, we raised £5000 to fund this tour, and we are extremely proud of the impact it has had. In visiting these projects, the young Siekopai members have learned skills, gained vital contacts, and most of all become inspired to really invest in the projects which SËRA are working towards. Hand in hand with this inspiration is a great sense of optimism. Shortly after the tour, this optimism was further assured when, thanks to their own crowdfunding efforts and perseverance in the courts, the SËRA Foundation was established as a legally recognised NGO.
Having connected with the SËRA just before Covid turned the world upside down, the idea that we would ever meet the community was not even considered during such an unpredictable time. However in 2022, Vicki, who runs a tree climbing training school for scientists, had the opportunity to work in Ecuador with a team of new canopy researchers and took the chance to visit the community with Rebecca and Puk.
It’s an incredible privilege to be able to run a campaign and raise money for a cause on the other side of the world. Zoom meetings, regular contact through Beth and a super successful BCC event was an experience in itself. However, it’s difficult to put into words the impact of getting to hold the hand and smile into the face of the very people whom over 12 months inspired an entire campaign with their tenacity and hope for a better world. It was during these 5 days that, through a series of conversations over food and forest walks, the Siekopai grew to understand what arboriculture and tree care is as we know it in our world and we got an insight into what ‘tree care’ means to them. We had the opportunity to explain how a community of tree enthusiasts raised the money through camping out and buying carabiners, and why we were so keen to learn about their life living in the Amazon Rainforest. The term ‘camping’ has a completely different concept in the jungle…
When it comes to finding causes for the BCC to support, our thinking had initially been that we change it up each year. However, the Siekopai’s incredible aspirations and their unrelenting drive had captivated us, and we knew there was still so much of their story to share with the world. Here was a cause which so perfectly embodied what Big Canopy Campout stands for, and so it was a natural decision to continue into 2022 with the SËRA Foundation at the forefront of our fundraising efforts.
The community were no strangers to climbing trees but the introduction to equipment and methods we used in arboriculture set in motion a conversation about how they could use the tools to collect medicinal plants, observe their own territory from the canopy and monitor the wildlife there.
Our main goal of 2022 was to support the endeavours of the Siekopai to further diversify their sources of income. The tour which the previous year’s funding had made possible inspired the community to invest in the future that they had imagined for themselves, and one stand-out initiative that embodied this goal was to establish their own distillation laboratory. This lab will be a key step towards bringing their incredible knowledge of medicinal plants to new generations of Siekopai, and by integrating this knowledge with modern techniques the community will be able to create products to use and sell from the fruits of their own land. A portion of our fundraising in 2022 went towards organising a distillation expert, with ties to the Pambiliño Forest School, to run workshops with the Siekopai, training them on how to use purpose-built equipment.
Make it stand out
The custom made distillation machine that will be used to create essential oils from the many different plants found in the rainforest and offer a source of income and self sustainability.
Since their visit at Pambiliño Forest school the community have cerated their own mosquito repellent and are selling it to neighbouring communities!
The other big draw we felt towards the Siekopai, was the story of an amazing community applying ingenuity and innovation while staying true to their heritage. The position we are in to help share their story is one which we feel great pride in, and since first connecting with the Siekopai we have been compelled to help bring their story to an international audience. Through our first year supporting SËRA we got to know Jimmy Piagauje, who has worked with his partner Kumiko, and fellow Siekopai member Ribaldo, to create a backlog of high quality video content as part of his ongoing work with the SËRA Foundation. Jimmy’s videography work showed us how much more of this story there was to tell, and we have been eager to do just that as the years have progressed.
We now find ourselves in 2023, and we are certainly not short of ideas, with this year being our most ambitious yet. To build upon the storytelling of our past two years, we now intend to make a feature length documentary showcasing the endeavours of the Seikopai through the lens of this year’s expedition. The laboratory which is well and truly in the works is expected to see completion thanks to the funds we raise this year, and our team of arborists will develop and teach a sustainable way of harvesting the Morete fruit to then be processed in the lab and create yet another sustainable source of income for the community.
It is an amazing journey which we find ourselves on, seeing the continued successes of the SËRA Foundation, and from such unassuming beginnings. The fact that the BCC has helped the Siekopai with their recent successes is a great source of pride for us, and it brings great happiness to think that by the end of this year the Siekopai will be in a place which, just 3 years previously, they had only begun to envisage for themselves. This is an exciting year for the Siekopai Remolino, and we are immensely grateful for the continued support from our Big Canopy Campout community in getting us to where we are now.
Keep following the story as we prepare for the expedition in September, if you’d like to support the project head over to our campaign page and get something from our shop or donate directly. Thank you!