Why Partner With Kallari?

Our missions are similar, but their reach in the Amazon Rainforest is broader than ours.  By partnering with Kallari, the Alliance for Cultural and Economic Exchange has the opportunity to support more rainforest communities in achieving economic sustainability.

Kallari Association is a grassroots coalition of Amazon artists and organic cocoa producers. Their goals are community viability and natural resource conservation through sharing knowledge and preserving the Kichwa culture. 

Their craft cooperative began in 1997 with less than fifty families and has grown to 660 families with 1670 artisans.  Set up to establish economic alternatives to the sale of rainforest plots in the Kichwa communities of the Alto Napo River, headwaters to the Amazon, Kallari has proven to be a sustainable and consistent means for the Kichwa people to fulfill basic family needs without logging their rainforests or selling their lands to farming, mining, or petroleum interests.

The export of handcrafts has inspired Kichwa youth to learn and practice traditional harvesting, weaving and carving techniques. With organic certification of their cocoa and improved production and harvesting techniques, Kallari was able to double the prices of their cacao and was able to improve the quality of their product by standardizing the fermentation process.