RARE: Reviving Ayurveda’s Rare Ecology

LifeSpa has proudly partnered with The Dunagiri Foundation in support of the protection, preservation, and sustainable and ethical cultivation of endangered Ayurvedic herbs in high-altitude Himalaya—the birthplace of Ayurveda and many of our planet’s most precious herbal remedies.

Through an integrated model of education, cultivation and distribution, The Dunagiri Foundation empowers and educates villagers to cultivate these herbs, and discourages illegal wild-harvesting practices in the fragile Himalayan ecosystem.

The RARE project’s first herb of focus is kutki, which was classified as endangered in 1997 due to unsustainable farming practices and severe over-exploitation.

Today, one crop of kutki, grown without pesticides, chemicals or GMOs, is being harvested each year by farmers and villagers in the remote Himalayan village of Gesh. In 2018, LifeSpa purchased the entire kutki crop.

We took a percentage of the crop that we needed to create a kutki product as part of our RARE project line, and we are giving 15% of sales back: 7.5% directly to the growers and 7.5% to The Dunagiri Foundation to help with the cultivation of other endangered herbs.

All the profits from the sale of the remaining kutki crop go directly to The Dunagiri Foundation to support the farmers and villagers who are growing these threatened herbs.

The RARE project provides ecologically responsible and sustainable income for the villagers, and also supports the legal and ethical cultivation of endangered Ayurvedic herbs.

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In addition, Dr. John Douillard and LifeSpa support two amazing foundations:

Kapoks	The Mwebaza Foundation
Kapoks’ mission is to assist communities in reaching their full potential through economic development and the promotion the entrepreneurial spirit. Their programs involve the identification, training and support of Enterprise Facilitators. Enterprise Facilitators are trained to assist new and existing business owners in bringing their indigenous skills and passionate business ideas to life.John is a board member of Kapoks which inspires entrepreneurship in indigenous communities around the world. Funds are being raised to help the indigenous people in the town of Lourenço, Amapá. Lourenço is a community located in a remote area of the Amazon jungle. On the homefront, Kapoks’ Granby Enterprise Initiative is making great strides in the developing mountain community of Granby, Colorado.With the ideal of “first do no harm,” Kapoks is about inspiring and guiding developing communities around the world to capitalize on their indigenous skills and make them an economic success. This concept has been proven successful around the world for years by Kapok’s new partner the Sirolli Institute.	John became aware of The Mwebaza Foundation through his children’s elementary school’s pen pal program with the Mwebaza school located just outside Kampala, Uganda. The foundation enriches the lives of students in Colorado through a cross-cultural exchange with their African partner schools. Donations help construct African schools, classrooms, provide books and other classroom supplies as well as general care for disadvantaged school children many of whom are orphans.We’re continually inspired to support their efforts as we see the fruits of their labor: Students seated in newly built classrooms rather than in thatch roofed shacks on mite-filled dirt floors The children’s faces light up when they receive the clothing donations that they were desperately in need of We are comforted knowing that they are now drinking safe water, growing sustainable gardens and eating eggs from chickens all donated by the foundation in an effort to facilitate their self-sufficiency We receive regular handwritten pen pal letters, in English, from the students expressing their heartfelt gratitude for the foundation’s support
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