The school of indigenous leaders, Senen Soi, is a leadership training program started by Organización Regional Aidesep Ucayali (ORAU), one of the regional chapters of Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP), a national indigenous federation established in 1980 to defend and promote the rights of the indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon and representing 1,400 indigenous communities. IWHC has been supporting ORAU since 2009. 

“The school helps us to have more knowledge of the issues and helps us identify the solutions and the actions that we can take.” -Jakeline Binari Pangoa, School Alumni

“This school responds to a current need, to the challenges that we indigenous peoples face when demanding our rights.” - Robert Guimaraes, the School’s Executive Director

Project

With IWHC support and together with Movimiento Manuela Ramos, the school of leaders has trained 30 indigenous men and women leaders from the Peruvian Amazon on gender equality and sexual rights and reproductive health, including HIV/AIDS prevention. As a result of this pilot project, a gender equality perspective has now been included in all the modules of the leadership training program. Also, the school organizers intend to include a special module on indigenous people’s health, including sexual rights and reproductive health, in their permanent program, reaching leaders from over 1,300 Amazon communities every year.

Impact

The School of Leaders provides regular trainings to leaders of 57 federations and organizations that represent 1,350 communities where 350,000 indigenous peoples live.

To learn more, visit the Senen Soi blog (in Spanish), and watch the video below.

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