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@gmail.com for more information.

Thank you all so much for a fantastic week! We are so grateful for all of your work in helping us put this together and creating such an amazing, exciting, and mind-opening cultural-service experience! You really opened us up and allowed us the ability to do something that I am sure will stay with us for a long time to come. Back in Boston we all really miss the community and learning and growing with all of you as our peers and guides through this amazing journey!

--Kayla, group leader from Massachusetts

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.

Northeastern University offered an Alternative Spring Break trip, which Tandana organized with the community of La Banda.  A ceremony featuring a communal lunch, traditional dances, demonstrations of traditional dress, and "ollas encantadas" a local version of piñatas, welcomed the group to the community.  During the week, they hauled sand and gravel, dug a trench, carried bricks, and helped community members build a water filtration tank to provide clean drinking water for the village.  They also helped at a community-owned native tree nursery, visited both traditional and modern weavers, baked bread with community members, and visited Cuicocha Lake.  The group's excitement about their experience has led them to recommend traveling with Tandana to their friends back in Boston.

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 rewarding that they plan to return each March.

Women Worldwide and Adventures in Rock organized a group of travelers who wanted to give back and then kick back in Mali.  In between travels through the country and enjoying the music of the Festival in the Desert, this group worked at the Kori-Maounde primary school.  Volunteers helped the villagers and children plant 54 fruit trees, dig a trench, lay a pipe, and create a watering basin in the school garden.  They also found time to play frisbee with the kids, teach them "head, shoulders, knees, and toes," and lead them with call-and-response to a water hole to bring water for the trees.   You can read a great description of their experience at Craig and Steph's Vacation Blog.

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.   

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