Ikiama Nukuri Program
By Fundación PachamamaAbout This Project
The Metaproblem
The Amazon rainforest faces an accelerating crisis — deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and the erosion of Indigenous cultures and ways of life. At the heart of this crisis is a fundamental injustice: the peoples who know, protect, and depend on the forest are among the most marginalized and underserved by formal systems of health, governance, and economy. Restoring the Amazon requires restoring dignity and wellbeing to the communities who live within it.
The Core Problem in the Bioregion
Indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon — particularly in the lower Pastaza river basin — are reachable only by river or air. Pregnant women, newborns, and babies face preventable risks because access to maternal and neonatal health services is limited, intermittent, or entirely absent. Cultural, linguistic, and geographic barriers further prevent respectful, culturally relevant care. In this context, a complicated childbirth or medical emergency can become fatal.
Our Solution
The Ikiama Nukuri Program is Fundación Pachamama's intercultural maternal and infant health program. It strengthens a community-based network of Indigenous midwives and health promoters, equips them with the tools they need to work safely in the territory, and coordinates emergency medical evacuations when lives are at risk. The program brings ancestral knowledge and Western medicine into genuine dialogue — not one above the other, but side by side.
What Makes It Unique
Ikiama Nukuri is not an outside intervention — it is an 18-year sustained presence built on trust, reciprocity, and the leadership of Indigenous women. With 53 active Achuar midwives and 16 Shuar midwives currently in the network, the program has accompanied over 2,500 pregnancies and delivered 5,000 safe birth kits. It treats midwives not as recipients of aid, but as protagonists of health in their territories, centering women's leadership as inseparable from forest conservation.
Why Your Donation Matters
Every day, Indigenous women in the Amazon prepare to give birth without access to basic health services. The gaps are concrete — and so are the solutions:
- A complete midwife backpack costs $500 and equips a midwife to accompany dozens of births in her community
- A safe birth kit costs $65 and gives one woman dignified conditions for delivery
- An emergency evacuation flight costs $3,000 and can save a life that would otherwise be lost to distance
These are not abstract numbers. They are the difference between life and death for some of the most isolated communities on Earth.
Donate Now
Support Ikiama Nukuri — because every birth deserves dignity, and every life deserves a chance.
Project Impacts
- 1500Pregnancies accompanied
- 5000Safe birth kits delivered
Equip the Network — Midwife Backpacks & Birth Kits
Supplying the active midwife network with complete equipment. Each of the 69 active midwives (53 Achuar, 16 Shuar) requires a fully stocked backpack to work safely in the territory. Alongside this, the phase targets delivery of 500 safe birth kits to
Strengthen Capacities — Midwife & Health Promoter Workshops
Funding intercultural training gatherings where midwives and health promoters share ancestral knowledge, engage with Western health personnel, and build skills in prenatal care, emergency identification, respectful birth, and prevention of gyneco-obs
Emergency Response Fund — Life-Saving Medical Evacuations
Fundación Pachamama
To work for the permanent conservation and protection of the Amazon rainforest, climate justice, and the self-determination of Indigenous peoples — accompanying communities in a biocultural strategy that integrates conservation, health, food sovereignty, water, bioeconomy, rights, spirituality, and territorial strengthening.
Support This Project
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