Gina Low,
Founder, President & CEO

Gina Low, the founder and director of APECA, says her determination to help the river villagers in Peru grows out of a lifelong interest in preserving traditional medicines and healing skills. As a child, She received the strong influence of her father's interests and work providing medical services in several American Indian communities. Her work today reflects his respect for Native American materials and methods.

When Gina paid her first short visit to Peru in 1993, she was a tourist. But she quickly saw that unless the villagers who live beside the Amazon River and its tributaries receive help, they will not be able to protect either their culture or the rain forest that shelters them. The lack of basic services in health, conservation, and education shocked her into action. By the time she headed back to Connecticut, Gina had decided to make a new life helping to strengthen and stabilize the rain forest communities.

On returning to Peru, she bought a river boat and converted it into a traveling training center and first aid station. On 1995 APECA PERU became a non-profit Organization with registration in the Ministry on the Presidency of the Peruvian government system. With her Peruvian associates, she also established APECA's main base for field operations, including a study center, on land beside the Amazon five hours upstream from Iquitos, the regional capital of northeastern Peru. This base, called El Fundo, is where She now spends most of her time administering academic and research programs that assist communities in their selfsustaining development.

Gina began her work surveying village needs and giving first aid services to the people who live beside the Amazon. When necessary, she would transport the seriously ill to Peruvian government hospitals in Iquitos. Over the years she has established solid working relationships with the Peruvian government ministries by facillitating their delivery of services to remote villages.

Although Gina took the first courageous steps to establish APECA using her personal resources and service, today we depend on participation of international academic Institutions, financial donors and individual organizations to help us deliver essential services to the rain forest people.