Las Vegas Is Ready to Rock at the Foundry

From the start, Yanapuma Spanish School was set up as a “social enterprise.” This term denotes a business that is set up either with the direct aim of helping to create social equality and improvement to living standards in a given population, or a business that devotes all or a large portion of its profits to a defined cause. In the case of Yanapuma, the foundation was set up with the aim of helping indigenous and marginalized communities to develop sustainably, and the Spanish school was set up at the same time to help to fund this work. At the start, the school struggled to survive in a competitive market for Spanish classes in Quito, but soon began to grow steadily. The Spanish school now provides the core funding to maintain the offices and related expenses of the foundation, giving it a security that many other NGO’s lack. In addition, each Spanish student is charged a $25 registration fee which goes in its entirety into a fund for providing scholarships to children in thevillage of Estero de Plátano on the Pacific coast of Ecuador. In 2013 we are supporting 13 children to complete high school. At times students also leave donations after they have finished studying with us. Some may have visited one of the communities that we work with while they are studying Spanish on our “Study in and Indigenous Community” program, and be moved to contribute to our ongoing work there. Others just leave us a donation to use at our discretion. In any case, we commit 100% of these small donations to direct project costs. Additionally, the Spanish school generates a fund which is used to complement other funding that the foundation now receives from international sources. In our experience, conditions on the ground are often changing, and in the lapse between an application for funding and the arrival of the funds, which may be more than a year in some cases, and the result is that we need to adapt the proposed project to fit the new situation. So it is vital to havethese extra funds available to fill in these funding gaps. Overall, the social enterprise model that Yanapuma has developed since 2006 has functioned successfully, and the Spanish School in Quito has made a significant contribution to the development goals of the foundation. Attendance at the school by Spanish students makes a positive difference to the work that we can carry out. You can learn more about Yanapuma Foundation by visiting our