THE CHILDREN'S FOREST OF CORITENI TARSO In 2001 the Association for children and their Environment, began a pilot project called the Children's Forest (BoNi, from the Spanish) in Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon. The project requires that the adults in a community hand over to their children a piece of land (2.1/2.5 acres) for them to manage and, in the process acquire knowledge, skills and values concerning the sustainable use of natural resources. Four years later, the BoNi project has been extended to 4 ecosystems in 7 locations in 5 departments in the Peruvian jungle and on the coast, where more than 230 hectares have been handed over to more 700 children. The first BoNi forest, which arose from the BoNi pilot projects in Madre de Dios is located in a Ashaninka community in Junin area. This is the testimony of Ivan Brehaut, executive director of the Cutivireni Association that encourages the BoNi project in this area. Months after the inauguration, the BoNi was visited by French tourists who were surprised and excited to see that the children themselves acted as their guides in the forest. With their first income the children paid for their inscription in a sports competition and bought their strips. Corentini Tarso is an Ashaninka native community some 45 minutes by river from Puerto Ocopa in the district of Rio Tambo, province of Satipo, Junin. This community, like the whole of the central jungle area, suffered severely from the violence of the nineties eighties decade and is now subject to heavy pressure from illegal loggers and incomers from the Andes. Among these pressures and disillusionments with Peruvian society, Coriteni Tarso smiles like its children, birds and waterfalls. The community lies at the foot of a long chalk bluff from which a number of small rivers flow, forming waterfalls around 130 feet high. Cutiverini association has been working for almost two decades in the region promoting conservation and social welfare, and has concentrated its efforts on promoting Otishi National Park and the Ashaninka and Machiguenga community reservations that form the recently created Vilcabamba complex. The person in charge of the forestry program suggested to the community that the children in the community school should be given part of the communal land to carry out conservation activities related to education and the management of resources. The reply was natural and simply and the communal assembly handed over 17 acres for the BoNi. The children rapidly adopted the proposed management model, appointing a chairman, secretary and treasurer although this was nothing new for them because these are the same authorities that are usually appointed in all the community's organizations. Work programs were drawn up in which parents and children worked together clearing the land, building a "pankotsi" (a shelter for children) and defining the boundaries of the forest and the official BoNi foundation. In the 27th of July 2003, the president of the community and the children of the first BoNi in Río Tambo met to inaugurate the shelter and with this small building the great dream of a better place for children. After the speech by the new community authority, the president of BoNi thanked everyone for their help, took charge of the minute book and was applauded generously by community members of the board of Inshatoshi placed their hands prints on the welcome sign. The hand print of Cesar, president of the BoNi is placed over that of Jorge, president of the community. The adults are the support, the base, but it is the children who stand out and who manage the project.