Seasonal floodwaters are approaching, monoculture agriculture, land prospecting, illegal timbering, and other illegal activities are sending out feelers into our communities.

The next four months are crucial, threats are urgent and real*, and the solutions are at hand.

This is your invitation to imagine and help create a thriving future. Donate now to help springboard our work.

We know our communities may be the next in national and international headlines*.

We know that our communities are fundamental to the health of the Amazon and the world.

We know we have choices; after all, we created VASI to help expand our choices.

And, we know that working together, WE can avert crises and shape a thriving future.

That “We,” includes you. You have a choice:

There are a million crises and reasons to bury our heads in the sand. We can choose to see the destruction of our communities and the world as we know it as either a dystopian distortion or as a for-gone inevitable.

We invite you to choose a third path.

This is your invitation to invest in hope, invest in work grounded in the reality of frontline communities and invest in the knowledge gained through millennia of science and lived experience.

2026 will be a crucial year. It will either be the year we surpass local and global tipping points or it will be the year we chose to work together to implement solutions and begin to turn this path.

Traditional local communities and Indigenous Peoples are increasingly recognized as leaders stewarding the health of the Amazon and our planet and central to humanity’s ability to survive.

We cannot do this work without recognition and respect of our legal rights, and we can not do this work without full funding for our work.

With you as a partner, we will create the change, we will turn the path towards a sustainable future, for our communities, for our world.

In recognition of the coming flood season, and to create a critical inflection point, between now and April 2026, we will amongst many things:

Replace the stolen motors from two of the district ambulances. As flood waters rise and then fall, epidemics such as dengue, unidentified viral diseases, and diarrheal diseases, and venomous snake bites rapidly increase, all while travel becomes limited exclusively to boats. In 2025, we worked with the local Mennonite communities to build trailers so that the ambulances can be easily secured between runs. We are now ready to help replace the motors and improve the ambulances’ capacity to evacuate people in emergencies and to provide preventative care in outlying communities. Access to culturally integrated health-care is a human right. And when we have access to healthcare, we no-longer have to rely on destructive fishing and timbering practices to meet emergency needs. It will take $30,000-we already have $13,000 in hand through a grant from the Marcel and Ulo Zwingmann Foundation.
Support the Indigenous leader led effort to form a district Indigenous organization. This is fundamental to protecting our lands, our cultures, our communities, and to gaining access to direct funding. We know that when our rights are recognized and our communities organized we will be better equipped to protect the Amazon and our world. Forming this organization will take $10,000.
Support communities’ efforts to create community producer associations (to be able to continue biodiversity conserving climate change mitigating practices and have access to legal incomes selling sustainably produced and harvested foods) and develop sustainable production and harvesting plans. We will begin in our four communities actively engaged in community-based lake governance and conservation. It will take ~$13,000 and this is already covered through a grant from Synchronicity Earth.
Map “Mother trees” and gather and plant 30,000 timber, native cacao, native fruit, and medicinal tree species seeds. These will then be distributed throughout our communities and provide the seedlings to develop an experimental school and laboratory, a series of agroforests and eventually small building where community members can test out ideas, create a germplasm bank, exchange knowledge and seeds, and more. This initial exploration and planting will cost ~$10,000.
Host our next stingless bee workshop, honey harvest, and further training for our community extension workers. Stingless bees are vital to community health. They serve as the major pollinators of many of our medicinal and food species, they help maintain forest structure and biodiversity, and the provide medicinal honey. And as the bees are highly sensitive to the use of agrochemicals, these activities both help to protect the bees and incentivize residents to rely on organic farming techniques. Our activities in this quarter, will expand the number of families, communities, and beehives, continue to expand community member’s honey harvest and sales, and help create a market for external sales. This will require approximately $10,000.
Continue to engage in regional, national, and international conversations on issues of health care, conservation, climate change mitigation, and sustainability. These conversations are vital spaces to shift understanding of our crises and solutions from siloed to integrated, bring attention to our and other communities work, contribute to the development of more robust national and international plans to address the linkages between health and conservation, climate change and biodiversity, and push for the inclusion of the role of Indigenous People and traditional local communities’ science and knowledge.

This and more, all in the first four months. Our total budget is $138,000 and we have $43,000 in hand. We are ready; can you springboard this work by helping us reach our end of year goal of $30,000?

If you are able, donate now, and share this with anyone who wants to invest in thriving global future.

On our previous years’ shoe-string budgets, amongst many things, we have already:

Hosted multiple workshops, exchanges, and hands-on experiences through which more than 200 residents of 13 communities have furthered work creating biodiverse agroforests to increase food sovereignty, create sustainable livelihoods, conserve biodiversity, and adapt to and mitigate climate change.
Gained historic legal recognition for community-based lake conservation, management, and governance in an initial group of 4 communities and ~18 lakes covering more than 5000 hectars.
Created a native stingless bee raising program that has expanded to 30 families in 11 communities and 61 hives, (that is a more than astounding 1400% increase in just 4 years), and we are just beginning.
Installed three (3) river ambulances which continue to serve the ~17,000 people in our district.
Installed the province wide (an area the size of all of the Hawaiian Islands combined) cold chain and cold storage, helping 45,000 people have long-term access to vaccines and temperature sensitive medicines (such as antivenom).
Participated in both the COP 16 on biodiversity and conservation and COP30 on climate change contributing to conversations on: role and linkages of health, climate, and conservation, the fundamental need for local and Indigenous leaders to guide conversations, the need for inclusion of Indigenous science, the imperative and possibility for direct funding, and more.

Together we have accomplished all that, and more, with only partial funding.

Imagine with us, what we will do together this year.

Imagine with us a future where all our grandchildren thrive; imagine what that would feel like.

VASI enjoys 501c3 status through our fiscal sponsor Utopia Foundation. We can accept online donations, checks, stock transfers, bank wires, and more. All donations are tax deductible. UTOPIA Foundation covers, free of charge, many of the expenses of receiving donations and maintaining non-profit certification. As a result, each of your donations has a greater effect. You can send us a check at Utopia Foundation, 12935 S. West Bayshore Dr Suite 390, Traverse City, MI 49684. Please, write VASI in the notes or Memo section. Please write, nancy@proyectovasi.org with any questions.

“Because, it’s our obligation to care for the lakes. If this is lost how will we live? This way. many other people will be able to see that we are doing something good caring for our fish, so that they too, as a community, learn something from us, so they, too can care for their lakes.” Miriam Ojanama Majipo, Member of the community of Nueva York’s Fish and Lake Protection and Monitoring Committee.

In addition to generous individual donors this work has been supported by:

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"Our globalized society has been degrading and destroying natural ecosystems across the entire planet. The future of the Amazon and the world depends on us. We must support and learn from indigenous and local communities as we co-create and implement collective solutions increasing well-being, conserving biodiversity, and mitigating climate change, disseminating seeds of hope towards a brighter future." Joao Campos da Silva, National Geographic Explorer, Rolex award prize winner, VASI partner,and President Instituto Juruá, Brazil.

“Because, it’s our obligation to care for the lakes. If this is lost how will we live? This way. many other people will be able to see that we are doing something good caring for our fish, so that they too, as a community, learn something from us, so they, too can care for their lakes.” Miriam Ojanama Majipo, Member of the community of Nueva York’s Fish and Lake Protection and Monitoring Committee.

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Invest In Our Communities, Invest in Our Planet, Invest in Your Future