Shanta Village Partners

Shanta Village Partners Durango, Colorado based nonprofit empowering rural villages through sustainable economic development in Myanmar & Zambia. Formally Shanta Foundation

Partnering with communities for 6 years focusing on health, education, and livelihood.

We talk a lot about "community-led development," but if you aren't seeing it every day, it can be hard to picture exactl...
06/16/2026

We talk a lot about "community-led development," but if you aren't seeing it every day, it can be hard to picture exactly what that means!

At Shanta, it represents a complete shift in how we think about help. It’s not about an organization flying in to fix things or telling a village what they need. It’s about a community organizing themselves, pooling their own resources, and building their own infrastructure so they never have to rely on outside charity again.

We aren't in the business of doing things for people; we're in the business of equipping them to do it for themselves.

We've said it before and we'll say it again.Aid that creates dependency isn't actually helping anyone. It's just a slowe...
06/12/2026

We've said it before and we'll say it again.

Aid that creates dependency isn't actually helping anyone. It's just a slower way of saying "you can't do this without us."

The best support looks like building something together, then getting out of the way.

Lwe Saung Village, Southern Shan State, Myanmar. Sixty-one households. The nearest large town is 54 miles away.For Daw N...
06/09/2026

Lwe Saung Village, Southern Shan State, Myanmar. Sixty-one households. The nearest large town is 54 miles away.

For Daw Nyein, a 38-year-old mother of two, illness felt like something her family just lived with. Recurring fevers. Skin rashes. Malaria. A family member diagnosed with kidney stones. When her first child had a reaction to a routine vaccine, her husband got scared and they paused the immunization schedule. The consequences followed.

None of it was a failure of care. It was the result of making health decisions without access to the right information.

Trained village health educators ran six structured discussion sessions in her village covering child nutrition, hygiene, sanitation, and disease prevention. Daw Nyein attended every one. Her second child received every vaccine on schedule.

"Illnesses in our family have truly decreased. Staying at home has become more comfortable and peaceful."

06/05/2026

For a long time, the assumption in international development has been that expertise only flows one direction. An organization arrives, trains a community, and leaves behind whatever it can before moving on somewhere else.

Shanta has always pushed back on that, but this year we're taking it a step further. In Myanmar, we've gone back to villages we've partnered with for years, communities that built water systems, launched savings groups, put women in leadership roles, and kept all of it going without us. We asked them something different: would you be willing to train the next village?

Not Shanta. Not our local partners. The village itself, because the people who walked that path understand it in ways we never fully will.

Wade talked about it on this month's RISE podcast and didn't dress it up: "I believe that they know more than you or I do. With all my heart, I believe that they will be more effective than us."

Episode 38 is live now on your favorite streaming platforms or: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/2186863/episodes/18868819-episode-38

For Khai, our Global Program Manager, the Thingyan Water Festival used to mean days spent outside with neighbors, street...
06/03/2026

For Khai, our Global Program Manager, the Thingyan Water Festival used to mean days spent outside with neighbors, streets filled with laughter, and the whole country slowing down to celebrate the arrival of the new year in Myanmar.

But since the 2021 military coup, public life has shifted drastically. The sense of ease has been replaced with caution. And for those living far from home, like Khai, the distance feels even greater during this season.

Yet, the heart of Thingyan endures. It’s a reminder that while traditions may evolve and change shape, their true meaning remains intact.

Read Khai’s beautiful reflection on water, memory, and a new year far from home here: https://shantavillagepartners.org/thingyan-2/

Why do farmers in places like rural Myanmar go hungry when they're farming the land every day?Khun Soe Myint had abandon...
05/28/2026

Why do farmers in places like rural Myanmar go hungry when they're farming the land every day?

Khun Soe Myint had abandoned soybeans years ago when prices fell. It wasn't worth the risk. Without access to affordable capital or training in soil management and record-keeping, most farmers here make decisions based on what they can survive, not what they could earn.

After joining Shanta's Livelihood & Farmer Resilience Program in Ham Phoe Pay village, he replanted soybeans across three seasons.

Through storms and setbacks, he harvested 685 kg and netted roughly $256 on $231 in costs. More importantly, he figured out that soybeans cost less to grow than corn and returned more. He never had the data before to know that.

Hunger doesn't end when someone hands a farmer food. It ends when a farmer has the knowledge, capital, and market access to build something that lasts.

Have you ever had to make a decision based on what you could survive rather than what you could build?

05/26/2026

Two years ago, Wade and the team made a hard call in Nachili, Zambia.

The community had committed to contributing labor, raising money, and paying monthly user fees to maintain their new water system. None of it was happening. So we stopped construction and walked away, leaving half the system unbuilt.

It wasn't easy. There were real costs already in the ground. But the whole point of this model is that communities own their water systems, not Shanta. A system people don't believe in, don't invest in, and don't manage isn't a water system. It's a liability.

For two years the team kept meeting with Nachili, kept talking about partnership and ownership and what it actually means to invest in your own future. Six months ago it clicked. The community organized, raised funds, paid their fees, and dug several kilometers of trenches themselves.

Wade's standing in front of the finished system in this video. That's what two years of not giving up on people looks like.

People's Action Forum

Aubrey Peterson graduated last weekend with a BS in Engineering from Fort Lewis College and a Graduate Certificate in Gl...
05/25/2026

Aubrey Peterson graduated last weekend with a BS in Engineering from Fort Lewis College and a Graduate Certificate in Global Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and then she did what Aubrey does - she got on a plane to Zambia.

She's been part of the Shanta team as Assistant Program Manager, and if you've been following along, you already know her story. She first came to Zambia as a student with the Village Aid Project, helped build clean water systems and a footbridge, and somewhere along the way decided this was the work she wanted to do with her life. Two degrees and a lot of hard work later, here she is, back in the field for the next 10 weeks.

We are so proud of her. Congratulations, Aubrey!

05/22/2026

There's a person behind every newsletter, every donation acknowledgment, every story that lands in your inbox from us. That's Margery Poitras, our Development Coordinator!

She spotted a Shanta job listing in the Durango Herald back in 2019 and the rest is history. These days she manages donations, writes acknowledgments, and takes raw stories from the field teams and shapes them into the updates that keep you connected to the work. Small org, big heart, and Margery is a huge reason that connection exists at all.

05/21/2026

104 households in Mpasu and Nachili villages now have piped water!

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Durango, CO
81302

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+19707491198

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