The 8 founder members of Yanapuma Foundation came together in August of 2006, motivated by a collective social conscience. Composed of 4 Ecuadorians, 1 American and 1 Brit, the foundation is dedicated to improving the social and ecological conditions of Ecuador. The idea from the start was to try to be to a certain extent self-financing, principally through the development of a Spanish school for foreigners. With a sound financial base, we could build a foundation that could pledge the maximum amount of donations received to particular projects without having to take out a large overhead for administration.
After two years of operation, that vision is beginning to turn into a reality as the school continues to grow. In our first year we averaged 5 students per week, increasing to about 10 students per week in the second year. Our eventual aim is to develop a fully professional school with an average of 20 students per week on average.
Additionally we receive some extra funding from volunteer groups and individual volunteers that we host several times a year. The added advantage is that we can harness their energy to carry out projects that benefit the communities that we work with and that fit into an overall development strategy.
During our first year we also received donations from small donors; schools, daycare centres, and individuals who were happy to know that all their donation would go towards a particular project. These donations typically averaged up to $2000. In our second year we have seen confidence in our abilities to manage projects increase and we have been fortunate to receive donations up to $13000. At the same time, with some solid accomplishments under our belt we have begun to seek larger amounts of funding that will allow us to carry out more complex and larger scale projects.
From the start we set out to create a methodology that would avoid many of the pitfalls that we have observed in the work of other foundations. Our aim is to work in an integrated fashion across all the axes that are important in the creation of a sustainable future, to work in a fully collaborative manner with communities in order to develop ownership, leadership and confidence in the communities to manage their own futures, and to be fully accountable both to those who support our work and to the communities themselves as a model for how they can develop successfully.