Tara Waters Lumpkin, environmental and medical anthropologist, is the president of the nonprofit Perception International and founder, editor-in-chief, and project director of the online multimedia platform Izilwane. Perception International is a nonprofit that promotes environmental, cultural, and perceptual diversity worldwide. Izilwane is one of its projects and focuses on creating awareness about the importance of changing how human beings perceive themselves in relationship with other species and the natural world.

Just as Copernicus forever altered our perception of the role of humans in the cosmos, Dr. Lumpkin’s organization believes that humankind can redefine our human place in local and global ecosystems as being a part of nature, rather as seeing ourselves as being above nature. The website asks, “How can we change our perceptions and, thus, alter our negative impact on biodiversity? Are we evolutionarily hard-wired to destroy other species? Or can we become more aware of our own ‘animal nature’ and consciously and deliberately change our behaviors?”

What is truly new about Izilwane is that we work with volunteer eco-reporters from around the globe. Reporters use writing, photos, video, and more to reflect on what is happening globally to biodiversity and how we can change human perceptions to stop the massive species die-off we are perpetuating. By being participatory in our journalistic approach, we are creating activists around the world who support our mission to stop biodiversity loss, as well as educating the general public. This is why we call ourselves a platform not an ezine.

Dr. Lumpkin is also a nonprofit consultant and journalist. Although she is a resident of Taos, New Mexico, her fieldwork has propelled her around the globe. From 1993-1994, Dr. Lumpkin worked in Namibia to conduct research for her PhD, where she studied the community use of traditional medicine. A few years later, in 1997, she traveled to Panama as a “Women in Development” fellow for USAID and the Panamanian National Commission on the Environment where she researched ecotourism possibilities in the Panama Canal Watershed. Since then she has worked for a variety of nonprofits across the world, including Tibet, where she conducted a Maternal and Child Heath Needs Assessment. Her project resulted in the building of a health clinic in Gargon village, and the training of nurse midwives and doctors.