A community rising from disaster

Walking Palms was a grassroots effort founded in the wake of the devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Ecuador’s pacific coast in April 2016. The earthquake co-incided with the strongest El Niño event on record exasterbating the negative health impacts on local communities. Our organization arose out of the need to recruit doctors, nurses and volunteers from around the world in the days after the earthquake. In providing health services to over 6,000 local residents during those trying months, we realized that sustainable community health initiatives would require longer-term recovery efforts and programs.

Today, we are an interdisciplinary global health organization that uses Systems Thinking to help our communities build social resilience. Together with our partners which include Ecuadorian governmental agencies, universities in both Ecuador and the United States, as well as countless individuals and groups from across the global health community, we promote and offer holistic, community-led programs and education in Latin America and the Caribbean. All our work, including collaborative scientific research in the areas of ethnobotany, environmental conservation and mental health, is rooted in traditional scientific principles and research-backed data.