The Tandana Foundation can offer your group a chance to make a difference in the lives of rural Ecuadorians or Malians while becoming part of the community you serve.  Stay with host families or in a community building, eat local foods with your hosts, help villagers replace inadequate drinking water pipes or paint their community center, harvest corn and use its flour to bake bread, hike to sacred places while hearing legends about their importance, and play games with schoolchildren.

Whether you have a class, school group, church group, set of friends who want to explore the world, healthcare professionals, teachers, writers--any group that wants a new experience and a chance to make friends by helping out--we can coordinate a service project and a unique learning experience for you.  Contact us at tandanafoundation@yahoo.com for more information.

Here are some examples of things we've done in the past:

The Traveling School, a study abroad program for high school girls from all over the United States, spends a week each spring in the village of Agualongo. The teachers and students stay with host families in the village, teach English to the local children, and help the citizens with projects such as painting the community center or replacing inadequate drinking water pipes. This year, they were amazed to be welcomed with huge flower arches, a special dinner, music, and dancing. As an experience of learning, cross-cultural friendship, and human connection, this week is amazing.  Though the group travels for three and a half months in the Andean countries, their time in Agualongo remains a huge highlight of the journey.

Deer Hill Expeditions offered Expedicion Ecuador, a three-week program in Ecuador culminating with a week in the village of Panecillo.  During this section of the program, participants had a chance to harvest corn, take it to the mill to be ground, and then make bread and bake it in a wood-fired oven.  They learned to cook traditional dishes, hiked with their local friends to a sacred waterfall, helped community members replace inadequate drinking-water pipes, and put on game days for the village children.   

The University of Utah brought a group of healthcare providers and medical students to Ecuador.  During one week, they worked with Tandana staff and the team from the Gualsaqui rural health center to provide care to patients in remote villages.  They gained practical experience of health care in a rural Ecuadorian setting, learned about the local health care system, exchanged with a shaman, visited a master weaver, and hiked to a sacred waterfall.  Their experience was so much more rewarding than a previous trip coordinated by a Quito university that they plan to return next March.

I felt that I was really a part of the community and that we made a good impression and that we did a huge thing that really achieved improvement in their lives." 
--Erica, student from Washington