Type: Cultural and social initiative
Organisation: Amazon Action Cultural Association, founded Lima, 2006
Co-founders: Arturo Laime and Marco Schneider
Location: Iquitos and San Juan de Yanayacu, Loreto, Peru
Duration: 2006–2013
Communities reached: San Juan de Yanayacu, Ayacucho and surrounding riverside communities
Area of work: Community development, arts education, environmental conservation, public health
Supported by: Volunteers and donors from Europe and the Americas, including organisations based in Monaco and Germany, and Catholic and Evangelical church networks
PROJECT STATEMENT
Amazon Action was a grassroots cultural association co-founded in Lima in 2006 by Arturo Laime and Marco Schneider — an equal partnership between a Peruvian artist and a German social entrepreneur. The association’s aim was to promote biodiversity conservation, community wellbeing and cultural development in the Peruvian Amazon basin. Operating from a field base on the Yanayacu River — five hours by speedboat from Iquitos, one of the most remote cities in the world — Amazon Action worked directly with riverside communities in one of the planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems, a recognised biodiversity hotspot where species diversity far exceeds that of entire continents.
Over seven years, the association delivered programmes across four areas: community and social development, arts and culture, public health, and environmental conservation. The work was made possible by a network of international volunteers and donors, including students, psychologists, medical professionals, and school groups from Lima, who lived and worked alongside the team at the field base and travelled by boat to remote communities to implement programmes on the ground.
COMMUNITY & SOCIAL PROGRAMMES
In the district of Belén on the outskirts of Iquitos, Amazon Action supported the formation of Las Gaviotas Triunfadoras — a self-organised mothers’ club — and launched the area’s first community soup kitchen. The association fully equipped the facility through donations and operated it independently for approximately eighteen months, building the organisational capacity of the mothers’ group to run it autonomously. The soup kitchen was subsequently integrated into Peru’s national network of community soup kitchens, administered through the local municipality — a formal recognition of the model the association had established.
Alongside this, Amazon Action delivered wellbeing and self-esteem workshops for approximately 20–25 children and 15 mothers, facilitated by two German volunteer psychologists, as well as hygiene and health education sessions across several communities. Youth arts and craft workshops were led by volunteers from Spain. Laime personally conducted sessions in alternative painting techniques, inviting local Amazonian artists to facilitate workshops using traditional materials — including yanchama bark cloth and natural plant pigments — as a means of cultural recovery and intergenerational transmission.
PUBLIC HEALTH
In partnership with a North American university medical programme, Amazon Action coordinated visits by medical students and physicians to San Juan de Yanayacu and three neighbouring communities. The teams provided first-response medical check-ups and essential medicines to populations with no regular access to healthcare. The field base served as the operational hub for these visits, combining medical outreach with direct experience of the Amazonian ecosystem.
ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES
The association established medicinal plant gardens at the field base and assisted two local communities in creating their own, drawing on indigenous botanical knowledge as both a conservation strategy and a point of interest for international visitors. Volunteer groups — including school promotion groups from Lima — participated in habitat restoration work, supporting communities in identifying degraded areas around their settlements and undertaking reforestation with native species. Waste management awareness work addressed one of the most persistent and underdocumented environmental challenges facing Amazonian communities.
Amazon Action also maintained an informal wildlife sanctuary at the field base, receiving and rehabilitating primates — primarily squirrel monkeys, pygmy marmosets, saddleback tamarins and capuchin monkeys — that had been kept illegally as pets. Animals assessed as suitable for return to the wild were gradually reintegrated into the surrounding forest.
IMPACT
Over seven years, Amazon Action delivered community programmes reaching hundreds of families across multiple riverside communities in Loreto. The soup kitchen model established by the association was integrated into Peru’s national community welfare network. Medical outreach reached communities with no regular healthcare access. Arts and cultural programmes engaged children, young people and mothers across communities with severely limited educational resources. The association closed in 2013 having demonstrated a replicable model for artist-led, community-based development in one of the world’s most remote and biodiverse regions.
Open to collaborations with cultural institutions, NGOs and organisations working at the intersection of art and social change.
Arturo Laime 2018
