Learning and Service Journey into Amazonia

Program Description

Participants will have an opportunity to participate in service learning fieldwork and experience life in the Amazon. Students will volunteer with a variety of agencies in Iquitos to help with community development projects in indigenous and peasant communities on the Yanayaku, Itaya, Nanay, and Amazon rivers alongside taking courses on the cultures of the Amazon basin. Participants will be placed in volunteer projects matching skills and interests.

Participants will participate in the daily life of Iquiteños by living in homestays in addition to activities and classes led by Florida State faculty. Through on-site research and collaborative projects, students will learn about rural Amazonians. A required mode of travel to visit local communities is boat travel in the Amazon.

Highlights

Included social and cultural events:

•Welcome and farewell dinners
•Excursions to visit rural CRFA schools on the Napo River in the Llachapa community
•Pacaya-Samiria trip: Participants will learn about riverine and forest communities that foster a symbiotic relationship with their environment, animals, and plants through cultivated plot gardens and sustainable hunting and fishing
•Three-day trip includes a two and a half hour excursion down the Amazon River while viewing a primary forest that has never been cut on a journey to San Rafael, a village sustained by ecotourism
•Two-day visit to see a Kukama language maintenance school and a butterfly garden at the local village of Padre Cocha

What`s Included

The program fee includes:

•All registration fees
•Instructional costs for up to 6 undergraduate credits*
•Housing and all meals (with host family)
•Welcome orientation
•Program planned excursions
•Program planned group activities
•Full-time academic support
•Full-time administrative support
•Health Insurance
•International Student ID Card
•IP T-shirt and travel water bottle

*For graduate course availability, contact Betty Seymour.

Not included: Round-trip international airfare; passport; food (except as noted); books and supplies; personal travel/activity/spending money; university-assessed fees (e.g. per credit hour technology fee).