in 1980 , Uli and I were on a vacation trip to Ecuador. In the rainforest on the Pacific coast, the chief of the indigenous Chachi people asked us for advice and help. In 1982, we founded the INDIO-HILFE e.V. association to do just that.
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Webinar 1 – Mal eben den Urwald vermessen

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in 1989, the Ecuadorian government drew our attention to the precarious situation of the Huayrapungo. They are Kichwa mountain farmers in the Azogues/Incapirca region who only became independent from the large landowners in the 1970s. Traditionally, they looked after the dairy cows of their lordship, but had no experience in marketing the milk.
Together with them, we made cheese from it.

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in 1992, we also cooperated with the Pilahuin, also Kichwa mountain farmers in the province of Tungurahua, who had a similar marketing problem after independence. However, thousands of them were already stranded in the largest slum in the capital Quito. INDIO-HILFE enabled them to return home and build a new life in their fields.
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Webinar 4 – Raus aus dem Slum! Raus aus der Stadt!

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in 1997, we were called to the Amazon region of Ecuador for the first time, where several indigenous peoples were seeking help after long military conflicts: Sapara, lowland Kichwa, Shuar, Achuar.
We accepted the challenge, although we were still in the middle of our work with the Chachi and the highland Kichwa in the Andes.
The INDIO-HILFE association launched the AMAZONICA project for this new part of the country. In doing so, we formulated the basic idea of our work: „Protecting the tropical rainforest by supporting its indigenous people“
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Webinar 2 – Naturschutz durch Bildung

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in 2007 , the project became the AMAZONICA Foundation, which soon began working with German and Ecuadorian universities. The foundation created the AMAZONICA Academy project for these academic areas.
The INDIO-HILFE association continued with its task of community development in the villages. The collaborations with the Chachi (2002) and with the Kichwa farmers (2004), which had been prepared over a long period of time, ended in mutual agreement.

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by2015, all the undertakings had grown to such an extent that we decided to let the academy become independent. The project became a non-profit limited company, the AMAZONICA Akademie gGmbH.

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The seven peoples we have worked with so far, in numbers.
Unfortunately, the figures are only approximate because the information we receive from the indigenous people and the state authorities is very different.

Chachi: 14,000 – Huayrapungo: 12,000 – Pilahuin: 30,000 – Sapara: 2,000 – Lowland Kichwa: 65,000 – Achuar: 8,500 – Shuar/NASHE: 22,000