My Nonprofit Reviews
ohiohope
Review for The Tandana Foundation, Spring Valley, OH, USA
Tandana Foundation is unusual in that it takes the volunteer off the beater path, and combines community service with cultural knowledge and vacation activities. It believes that creating relationships over its 11 years of service in a small area in Ecuador and Mali is more important that working in a large number of countries. I like to say it is a mile deep and a inch wide in its service area and activities instead of a inch deep and a mile wide as most programs. This approach gives the volunteer a true sense of the country, the culture and the people you work with. You get a deeper understanding of why things are the way they are from knowledgeable staff and learn to appreciate another culture as well as your own.
Review for The Tandana Foundation, Spring Valley, OH, USA
The Tandana Foundation is a very well run non profit organization with programs in Highland Ecuador and the Dogon country of Mali West Africa. All volunteer work vacations are organized by Tandana's founder, Anna Taft. participants reap the benefit of her many years of working and living in these areas of the world because her friends become your friends and you are no longer a tourist in a foreign country , but a friend lending a hand to friends who what to better their communities. Besides volunteer vacations, Tandana funds scholarships for indigenous high school students and small community grants for locally generated needs. You should add your helping hand to theirs and go on a cultural safari for a very meaningful vacation.
More Feedback
I've personally experienced the results of this organization in...
changed lives... Smiles from patients who step on scales for the first time and know health care has come to their village.... excited talk from scholarship students about bright futures when you know their parent's education stopped at 3rd grade
If I had to make changes to this organization, I would...
provide it with more volunteers and money to weave more friendships and empower communities.
Would you volunteer for this group again?
Definitely
For the time you spent, how much of an impact did you feel your work or activity had?
Life-changing
Did the organization use your time wisely?
Very Well
Would you recommend this group to a friend?
Definitely
What one change could this group make that would improve your volunteer experience?
organize more volunteer vacations
Did your volunteer experience have an effect on you? (teaching you a new skill, or introducing new friends, etc.)
yes, i learn a great deal about myself and what's important to me as well as what's important in other cultures. often it was realizing people in all cultures value the same things, but just as often it was from a different starting point or approach.
How did this volunteer experience make you feel?
i felt good about helping people fulfill their goals in a meaningful and lasting way.
When was your last experience with this nonprofit?
2010
