Anna Taft is the founder and executive director of Tandana Foundation, a nonprofit organization that offers cross-cultural volunteer opportunities, scholarships, and support for small community projects in both Ecuador and Mali, a country in West Africa. Through this group, Taft is able to realize her dream of bringing help to these two countries that she has come to love.
We focus on particular places and communities, helping them to achieve their goals. based on their priorities, she said.
Taft lives in Mancos, but only part of the time. She spends four or five months of the year here, but then is traveling the rest of the year.
I go to one of several places, she said. In addition to traveling to Mali and Ecuador to work, she also spends time in Ohio, where shes from, Quebec, where she has a yearly family reunion, or Hawaii.
Taft first came to this area in 1993 to attend Deer Hill Expeditions as a student. Then, in 1999, she went to work there for about eight summers. My husband, John, works at Deer Hill seven months of the year, so thats why I like to spend more time here, she said.
The first time she went to Mali, in the western part of Africa, she just decided to go there for her own curiosity. That was in 2006.
I first went to see what I could learn, but I ended up connecting with the villagers.
She worked on improving the collapsed wells, started community gardens and orchards, started grain banks and a revolving fund to purchase grain, she said. The village where she spends most of her time is called Kansongho and it has about 800 people.
Millet is their staple and they have a hard time growing enough of it to get them through the year. So the Foundation bought a large stock of millet right after the harvest in the marketplace, helped them build a storage house and set up a committee to manage it. They sell it at a constant price, and its right there in their village. They then have the money from the sales to restock it when the market price is low again, she said.
The women of the village decided they wanted to do the same thing with the cotton they use. They dont grow it there, so they buy it from other parts of Mali where it is grown. They card it and spin it, the men weave it, and then the women sew the strips of cloth into wider cloth and sell it to a neighboring village for indigo dying.
We helped them create a cotton bank, which is managed by the women, Taft said. We also helped them build a storage house for the cotton. This was the first time the women had officially owned property, she said. They use it as a meeting place and for other activities.
On the cotton committee theres one man, and his job is to relay the cotton committees needs to the other men of the village, she said. The women have learned how to keep records, manage the stock and restock the cotton in subsequent years.
The village contributes unskilled labor and local materials. We bought the first stock of cotton and also imported materials for the building, such as tin, cement, etc., she said. We also provide them training for the committee.
I really love the friendships Ive made, Taft said. I want to maintain and honor them. I love the learning and growing that Ive experienced as well, and understanding the culture of the country.
In Ecuador, in the western part of South America, the Tandana Foundation started a scholarship program, providing schooling for many rural Ecuadorian kids in 7th through 12th grades. The families of the students are usually farmers, growing corn, potatoes and beans, weaving textiles and baskets, or they commute to neighboring towns for outside jobs. The students who received these scholarships come from communities in the mountains outside of Otavalo, Ecuador. They have already helped 71 secondary school students and four university students.
The Foundation has a local coordinator on staff, and he runs the scholarship foundation. He buys the kids uniforms, books and supplies and they, in turn, have to turn in their grades to him.
We also put on summer classes open to anyone in the community to give them a boost in English and math. We do a lot of volunteer programs, taking groups from the U.S. to Ecuador to help out, Taft said.
The volunteer vacation program that the Tandana Foundation offers, runs the gamut of experience. Many of the trips are health-care oriented and some are for education. They might help build something or make improvements to the community centers, Taft said. But one thing they have in common is that it changes your life.
Taft went to Ecudaor first to teach English and environmental awareness. I fell in love with the host family and the community. I went back to visit and I appreciated the love and openness of the people. I wanted to honor that by maintaining the relationships that I made and staying in touch, she said.
In Mali, in the village of Kansongho, Taft has learned enough of the language to communicate with some of the people. I started learning it a bit at a time. The language is called Tommo so and is one of 20 Dogon languages. The people there also speak French, if theyve gone to school, which Taft speaks, so they have that language in common.
The foundation has a local coordinator in Mali, so he does a lot of the translating for me, said Taft. In both countries there are interns and coordinators who teach literacy.
Taft will be in Ecuador in September, she said, for about six weeks. She likes to go there in the fall, she said, as thats when the volunteers are there. The elevation there is 8,500 feet, so its either raining and cold or sunny and hot, she said.
But I like to go to Mali in the winter, as the temperature is very pleasant in the 70s or 80s, Taft said.
Taft has also helped with the Traveling School, a program that teaches young girls after college from the U.S., and supported by the Tandana Foundation. She would travel with them through Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. It was a really neat experience for the girls, and I love sharing my experiences with other people, she said.
Taft went to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., and studied politics and international hierarchy. While Taft is the executive director of Tandana Foundation, her mother, Hope Taft, is the president of the 12-member board. They also have a bookkeeper and a former intern who does their contract work.
The word tandana is a word that Taft chose for the foundation and it comes from an indigenous language of Ecuador Kichwa. Its the Ecuadorian version of the Incan language, she said. Tandana means bringing people together.
It expresses our mission of bringing people together from different backgrounds in ways that are meaningful and beneficial to all, she said. The word, however, needs to be used with other words, so it symbolizes the fact that they have to bring other people into their efforts to help.
She started fundraising by raising money for kids that she taught in Ecuador and took the Deer Hill kids there. People responded well to her efforts and she just kept going with it.
The political situation in Mali has made things very difficult for them, Taft said, and thats why they did fundraising for the millet. There were very extreme circumstances this year, she said.
I hope to keep doing this as long as I can, said Taft. I know I wont go into any other countries. But I like the way this is all growing organically. I will continue to evaluate how things are working and meeting with the communities in the countries.
The Tandana Foundation is working on forming an organization to protect the trees in the area of Mali she stays in, as well as food security and some agricultural innovations. And since firewood is always a problem for them, they are working on a more efficient way to burn their fuel.
Ive seen life and the world in a different way, she said.
