Guyana benefits from Save Your World
Save Your World provides additional direct funds to Guyana and our rainforest concession above and beyond the profit percentage from each product sale in order to directly impact and to save the Guyanan rainforest and the communities there. Save Your World currently hires the rangers who patrol our rainforest concession from the three villages in close proximity to our land which provides jobs for those populations. Specifically, these three villages are Apoteri (50 miles from our rainforest concession), Rewa (75 miles from our rainforest concession) and Crash Water (100 miles from our rainforest concession). We also hire all local people for all of our trips and logistical support to the concession. This includes boat captains, guides and cooks.
Direct Financial Community Support: In addition to the actual rainforest land we lease and preserve in Guyana, we also fund the Guyanan governmental forestry commission via the funds the forestry commission receives from our lease. The funds are then channeled into the overall government financial coffers. The government builds schools and medical stations in each of the villages near our rainforest concession (described above). On our last visit in September 2007, we inspected a new school built by the government, the new water tank and solar powered water pump provided by the government, as well as new facilities for the school headmaster, and new medical facility provided by the government in these villages near our rainforest concession. These facilities are all made possible by Save Your World’s support of this rainforest area.
The local cultural traditions of fishing and hunting in Guyana are preserved via our protection of the rainforest land in its pristine state – without the aid of Save Your World, these rainforest lands in Guyana would be cleared away and the local people would have to completely change their way of life. By avoiding deforestation for logging or mining, we are helping to ensure that the habitat remains intact to support the local communities and their cultural and nutritional needs.
Community Preservation and Investment. Save Your World also participates in a voluntary community investment fund (“VCIF”) in Guyana. A VCIF is a fund Save Your World contributes to (along with Conservation International) in addition to paying for our rainforest lease in Guyana. As we have described in detail, the Save Your World mission is to support rainforest area in Guyana and this is where Save Your World is dedicated to helping preserve not only the rainforest, but the communities dependent on the rainforest. For example, Save Your World donated a high-powered boat engine to one of the three communities that the VCIF supports. In past years, Conservation International has donated mosquito netting to the villages. Save Your World is currently working on a project where Save Your World is donating money to provide more mosquito netting for each of the three villages. Save Your World will then hire women in each of the villages to make the mosquito netting for the people. This will solve two problems. It will provide a needed employment opportunity for women in these villages as well as help ensure that the people sleep under mosquito netting and therefore reduce malaria. Reducing malaria is a key objective to help the people in this region.
Save Your World’s participation in VCIF is in addition to the Save Your World rainforest lease. It is just another way that we are helping the communities that are helping us to protect the rainforest concession.
