Yachana Foundation

At the Yachana Foundation, we are dedicated to finding sustainable solutions to the challenges facing the Ecuadorian Amazon region.

“Yachana” is an indigenous Kichwa word that means “a place for learning.”  We work with rainforest communities to improve education, develop community-based medical care, establish sustainable agricultural practices, provide environmentally sustainable economic alternatives including micro-enterprise development and conserve the rainforest.

We employ an innovative development model based on a non-profit/for-profit organizational structure.  The non-profit foundation is partially supported by a for-profit company, Yachana Lodge and Center for Geotourism Training and other iniciatives to finance its fight against poverty, disease and the destruction of Ecuador’s imperiled rainforest.  The profits generated support the Yachana Foundation’s education, sustainable development and rainforest conservation projects, guaranteeing their long-term financial sustainability.

Since 1991, the Yachana Foundation, formally FUNEDESIN, and its projects have invested approximately 6.2 million dollars in the Ecuadorian Amazon.  This investment of time and resources has underwritten many triumphs.

Over the last 19 years, some of our accomplishments include:

• Opening the Yachana Technical High School in 2005, an innovation in high school education.

• Establishment of the Mondaña Medical Clinic in 1997, which once offered the only full-time health care to 8,000 Kichwa indigenous people and mestizos living along the Upper Napo River

• Initiation of an agricultural, technical assistance and commercialization program in organic cacao that helped over 2,500 subsistence farm families better manage their land, improve their agricultural production and raise their income

• Opening Yachana Lodge in 2005, now a world renowned, award-winning Geotourism destination and training center for Amazon youth.

• Creating Yachana Gourmet, a socially-conscious company that established a stable market for organically grown cacao purchased from over 2,500 small-scale growers in the Amazon; tons of cacao purchased annually were processed into fair trade certified chocolate in our factory in Quito before the factory closed in early 2009

• Constructing 21 schools in impoverished communities throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon region

• Creating 16 community banks now managed mainly by the women in communities

• Purchasing and protecting 4,300 acres (1,740 hectares) of primary and secondary rainforest, now government-certified protected forest

Our innovative, integrated approach has made great progress towards reconciling conservation and development in the Ecuadorian Amazon; however, much remains to be done.  Join us as we continue to provide a systematic change that will ensure the sustainable development and conservation of Ecuador’s rainforest region.