Pasquel Flores Augustin, whom CSEE has sponsored to study under world renowned visionary artist Pablo Amaringo and teaches in his school, will launch with future funding resources a Shipibo arts and crafts center. The building to house the school in the village of San Francisco already exists.
Crafts like wood carving, which is disappearing, are in need of preservation and support. This fits within the domain of CSEE’s shamanic preservation mission. The mission of the Art and Craft School will be to teach youth the complete art and craft cultural lineage of the Shipibo while bridging into the future through the visionary art work Pasquel has learned and is teaching.
The output of the school could help make it self-sustaining while feeding the Arts / Crafts Cooperative.
CSEE is seeking seed funding to establish an Arts and Crafts Cooperative in the Shipibo nation to create world wide distribution and sustainable income for Shipibo shamanic artisans and CSEE.
CSEE will establish fair trade prices and purchase inventory from San Francisco and other Shipibo villages. We would attain fair trade status for the cooperative which would be a not for profit entity. We will establish a standard percentage of proceeds going to CSEE from the sale of the arts and crafts in a global market.
This project is appealing because of its potential to become self sustaining and a renewable revenue source for CSEE.
CSEE is raising funds initially sponsor Shipibo shamanic artisans at the International Folk Arts Fair in Sante Fe for 2010. This will become an excellent fund raiser for CSEE by producing sales of these artisans arts and crafts.
Cultural Exchange Status Certification: CSEE is seeking funding for making CSEE and the shamanic communities we’re working with functional under a Cultural Exchange designation with the US State Department. This project is to tackle all the administrative work of creating Cultural Exchange Status for the indigenous people we’re working with to make student and shamanic exchange between borders a non-issue in this difficult post 9/11 environment.
Shamanic Exchange: CSEE is seeking funding to establish an annual inter-indigenous event at Eagle Bear Ranch, where shamanic wisdom and knowledge is exchanged amongst different shamans and their traditions The focus is on discovering the universal archetypes that resonate through these various shamanic traditions . These events will be archived in film and will help build out the goals and objectives of the shamanic educational film series.
CSEE is seeking matching funds for existing sponsorships for attaining formal education of future shamanic leaders within the indigenous communities with which we work.
The formal education of the Flores – Augustin children is an example of the model unfolding. We have formalized this into a program where the youth we fund to educate make agreements to return to their communities, learn the shamanic traditions of their own culture and help in their defense and preservation. This process sheds light on the intrinsic value of these young people’s cultural heritage to the outside world while increasing their personal skills and abilities to preserver their heritage.
Educational Products and Curriculum Development: CSEE is raising funds to develop educational shamanic products and educational curriculum. The songs, instructional stories, myths, and rituals of the shamanic communities we’re working with provide a wealth of material for developing educational products that help modern people reconnect to the natural world and sustainable ways of living in balance with the earth.
English Teaching: CSEE is raising funds to build two small houses to facilitate ongoing English language training, housing two teachers at a time. Funding would provision supplies, ESL program development and curriculum. Volunteers from the CSEE Youth program and the Power Path School of shamanism would sign up for teaching stints in San Francisco. CSEE would pay expenses of volunteers coming to teach. The program would include shamanic education and exchange for volunteers providing English teaching education.
CSEE is raising funds for aquaculture, reforestation for medicinal botany projects. CSEE has been funding the formal education of Walter Flores Agustin at Pulcallpa University, a private college in Pulcallpa Peru. Walter is majoring in sustainable ecology and botany. We are seeking funding to start a project that Walter would manage following his formal education focused on reforestation, aquaculture and medicinal botany. The result of this project would be restore the land the Flores Augustin family owns and make it highly productive for the growing of medicinal plants used in traditional Shipibo ceremonies, dietas and remedies. The project would help model modern ecological sustainability methods and practices in the village while supporting the plant wisdom heritage of the Shipibos.
Composting Toilets: This project is raising funds to improve the sanitation standards of San Francisco, a hub village in the Shipibo nation. This project dovetails naturally into the volunteer opportunities for the CSEE Youth Program. Helping raise the sanitation quality of living is San Francisco benefits the health and vitality of the shamanic families we’re assisting as well as projects like tourism, the youth program, English teaching and environmental sustainability projects proposed by CSEE.
It will be so much more enticing to facilitate cultural exchange if the sanitation situation in the village is improved, reducing the myriad of afflictions that come from the existing third world waste management system. Developing an effective composting toilet system in San Francisco would help model similar projects for other indigenous communities we work with.
CSEE is seeking seed funding for sending one or two staff members into various shamanic cultures to document what’s there and sow the seeds for project development forfuture CSEE programs. Mongolia/Siberia, Nepal, Equador (Shuwar), Finland (Sami), African bushman, Mexico / Huichol cultures are some of the target research candidates. Filming and documenting these ancient shamanic cultures will be a key achievement of these discovery expeditions.
CSEE Shamanic Archiving: CSEE is seeking funding for implementing a cross cultural shamanic archiving project capturing songs, stories, myths, healing arts, rituals and artisan methods for creating art laden with shamanic meaning.