Project Amazonas

A non-political, non-sectarian NGO working since 1994 to serve the people of the Amazon and conserve the rainforest.

Before European contact in 1542, it is estimated that as many as 10 million people lived in the Amazon. Today there are less than 200,000 indigenous people. Almost one hundred distinct tribes have disappeared since the early 1900’s due to introduced diseases, persecution, and assimiliation.

During the rainy season the Amazon River overflows its banks and can extend into the forest for a width of 25 miles in some places. Where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean, the Amazon is over 200 miles wide!

Over one fifth of the world's fresh water is contained in the Amazon basin's rivers, streams, and tributaries.

Although about 25% of all drugs are derived from rainforest ingredients, scientists have only examined the medicinal properties of around 1% of tropical plants. A large number of plant species in the Peruvian Amazon have been utilized by indigenous and other inhabitants of the region for medicinal purposes. The large medicinal plant and traditional remedies section of the Belen Market in Iquitos is a "must-visit" for anyone traveling to Iquitos.

A typical four square mile patch of rainforest may contain as many as 1,500 flowering plant species, 750 species of trees, 400 species of birds and 150 species of butterflies.

Each minute the Amazon River discharges 3.4 million gallons of water into the Atlantic, 14 times the discharge of the Mississippi.

Every day, an area of rainforest equivalent to 86,400 football fields is chopped down worldwide. The Peruvian rainforest has largely escaped this wide-scale destruction. Help us to keep it that way!

One in five of all bird species in the world can be found in the Amazon Basin. At our four field stations in the Peruvian Amazon, over 550 species of birds have been recorded!

More than 2,000 tropical forest plants have been identified as having anti-cancer properties. Most of these have yet to be clinically tested, however.

The Amazon covers 2.5 million miles, about the size of the USA west of the Mississippi.

Featured Solution & Their Sponsors

Cover the operational costs of the hospital boat for a day

Project Amazonas boat, the Tucunare, on the shoreline.

Project Amazonas has the only regularly operating hospital boat in the Peruvian Amazon. Our current boat, the Tucunare, provides basic medical care for six to eight thousand people annually who would otherwise have little to no access to healthcare.

Your donation will fund a mission to serve the communities along the Peruvian Amazon. For a trip with ten medical personnel and six crew aboard, daily operating costs for a journey to a remote river area are about $1000 per day including fuel, food, crew salary, and medical supplies.

Lend A Hand

Nurture a nurse

Help Deliver a Baby

Hire a Caretaker

Brush Children's Teeth

Project Amazonas boat, the Tucunare.

Float the Boat

Recent News

NYC fundraising gala to support Project Amazonas and Peru disaster relief

20 May 2017 - New York City fundraiser to support Project Amazonas and Peru disaster relief.

High-tech, low-cost innovations for Amazon schools

March 2017 - Educator Dana Rensi is spearheading an effort to provide rural Amazon schools with low-cost, high-tech educational resources. Read more about the innovative endeavor at www.dailytidings.com/news/20070403/seeding-silicon-jungle (if link doesn't open, typing "seeding-silicon-jungle" into your browser should take you to the full article)

Project Amazonas is looking foward to collaborating with Ms. Rensi, and with Stanford bioengineer Manu Prakesh whose lab has designed extremely low-cost, and low-tech but highly effective medical centrifuges and microscopes that Ms. Rensi will be field testing in the Peruvian Amazon.

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Project Amazonas, Inc.

701 E Commercial Blvd #200

Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA 33334