Payasos Ambientalistas

Welcome to our new project 'Los Payasos Ambientalistas'.

We're proud to say were more than a month into our workshops and everything is going extremely well.  

In this project, with our team of local activists and artists, we are leading a 2-3 month long workshop.  This workshop focuses on environmental education as well as art and theater. The environmental education is broken into two segments including hands on projects, such as building compost and hanging gardins. The two educational segments are Solid Residuals, which includes waste separation, and our second theme is Biodiverstiy in the greater part of Iquitos.

Our art workshops focus on using organic and local materials. Things you can find in your neighborhood, or that virtually have no cost. Some materials consist of: dirt, seeds, bottles, glue (using flour and water), paper, etc... Simple and yet effective. We also lead workshops in puppetry, using wire, seeds and donated fabric. With the hand puppets our students will lead us on a story of environmental justice and will communicate their knowledge of Iquitos's local resources. Our theater piece will focus on clown heroes, wearing custom red and yellow noses, who have to over come the evil black nosed clowns that seek to terrorize mother nature.

The first round of puppets, our trial. This week begins cone puppets!

This year we are working in a school located in Belen, sector 10, called Sara Sabebein. We began our pilot project Tues. June, 19th. We run clases Tues. and Thurs. each week. Our students range from ages 9-12. Some students are repeats while others are brighter for their age. The average ages are 10 and 11. Both the students and teachers have taken to our group and teachings with opened hearts, minds and opened arms. 

This week:

Tues, July 10: we have a presentation on biodiversity given by the head of environmental education at IIAP (Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonia Peruana) IIAP is large national institute with credibility from the Ministry of Environmental Education in Peru.

We will then go on to play the fruit game. This will consist of blindfolding our students so they can feel and taste different fruits to educationally guess what they are. They then will draw the fruit and answer a series of questions about its physical attributes to be posted throughout the school.

Thurs, July 12th we will spend the day working on theater.

Community Project

This week we will paint a mural consisting of 'la naturaleza' with our students and will mark the area where we will develop a compost bin, which will be donated by the school. In front of the compost bin the students will install their hanging gardens, which will be growing plants: herbs, vegetables and flowers that we'll cycle into the compost project. This community project will take place this coming Saturday, July 14th at 8 o'clock am, and will include participation from the students family, the students and the teachers.