A chance meeting between a Burmese tour guide and two Americans backpacking through Southeast Asia forever changed the destiny of so many villagers in rural Myanmar. When founders Tricia & Mike Karpfen and their guide, Thar Nge, first visited the remote, mountainous villages of the Pa-O ethnic tribes in 2004, they found gracious communities of subsistence farmers living a difficult life without electricity, clean water, motorized vehicles, or any available health services. The three were so touched by these hardships that in 2006, they formed Shanta Foundation in the US and Muditar Foundation in Myanmar to partner with these villages to sustainably address their needs. The first village partnership started in 2009 with Yim Bya. The rest is history, though we encourage you to read the founder’s story HERE.
Let’s fast-forward to 2024. Program officers confidently introduce numerous different project areas to partner villages. Through the six year partnership, villagers obtain skills to improve their communities and achieve sustainable development.
Because of the creation of the Karpfen’s community-led development model, Shanta Foundation has successfully graduated 30 village partnerships, maintains 17 active partnerships in Myanmar, and has four active partnerships in Zambia. What started with a promise to build a school in Yim Bya, has become a transformational organization changing lives in our partner villages to end extreme poverty forever.
