David Andi, his wife, and four children live in a bamboo hut in the Amazon rainforest, several hours' hike from the nearest dirt road. They grow corn and cocoa, scraping a living out of a tiny field cleared in the jungle. Ecuador's economic crisis in the late 1990s eroded the family's income to less than $500 per year, while prices for necessities tripled.

Until recently, Mr. Andi, one of the Quechua people, knew of only two ways to escape this poverty, and he liked neither: He could log the rain forest, which would leave landscapes of infertile soil; or he could trade with warring factions from neighboring Colombia and thereby abet the Colombian civil war's spread south into Ecuador.

Now he has an alternative. Seven months ago, he joined the Callari Project, a marketing cooperative spanning 15 towns and villages in Ecuador's Napo province. Callari, whose name means "ancient" in the Quechua language, aims to help indigenous people make a living without destroying their forest or getting involved in the Colombian conflict.

Since the cooperative formed two years ago, 700 artisans and 300 farmers have increased their incomes 30 percent by improving the quality of the cocoa and coffee they grow, relearning indigenous methods for producing useful items from jungle materials, and marketing their products abroad. Together they have made some $200,000 in extra income that goes to buy schoolbooks, build better houses, or provide emergency funds.

"My family's situation has improved a great deal," Andi says, while he weaves a mesh of strong fibers that he pulled out of the long leaves of a pita plant. "Now, we can buy school clothes and books for my children. They never could have those things before." Outside the capital, Quito, education is not free beyond elementary school. It costs $300 per year to send a child to high school.

But the effects of this project go beyond education. Thalia Flores, editor of the national newspaper Hoy,says Callari could provide a new economic model in the Amazon. "We desperately need economic alternatives like this in the Amazon region," she says. "This is the key to protecting Ecuador from the Colombian conflict. When people are so poor they have nothing left to lose, they will do anything to make money, even dangerous things. The Callari cooperative won't solve everything over night, but it can improve the security situation and provide a model for sustainable development."

Bartolo Tapui, a former policeman in Andi's village, says that before the Callari cooperative expanded to Ila Yaku, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest guerrilla group in Colombia, was gaining a foothold in the area. But as soon as the villagers organized, the guerrillas went elsewhere. "The FARC uses people who are desperate and weak," Mr. Tapui says. "Now that people here can make money doing honest work, they won't have anything to do with the guerrillas."

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