Health Emergency in the Shuar Community of Ecuador

Hello all! My name is Amalia Sirica, I am writing on behalf of Tuntiak Katan, the Vice Director of COICA, the organization that represents Indigenous leadership groups from all nine nations of the Amazon. Indigenous communities are essential in the war against climate change and in preserving the Amazon rainforest. See below for a message from Tuntiak: 

"Taisha is a Shaur community that sits in the middle of the Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest. It is made up of 3,000 families. I was born and raised in this community, and right now we are in the middle of a health crisis because of COVID-19. The families that live in this community are not receiving any humanitarian care. Our elders, who possess invaluable knowledge, are particularly susceptible to the virus, and the women and children are also vulnerable. 

We are in need of urgent support in order to buy medicine and food and COVID-19 tests (doctor's are unable to travel to our community). Because of the state of emergency, the families are unable to travel to buy what they need. With your help, we would like to assist them.  As mentioned, this is an emergency, and we need to get these funds to our community as quickly as possible. 

Thank you very much for your help, we are incredibly grateful." 

Warmly, 

Tuntiak Katan

You can read more about Tuntiak’s participation in the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit and the importance of indigenous people to the fight against climate change here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/26/tuntiak-katan-indigenous-representative-un-climate-summit.