Social Impact Project for Website Design and Optimization in Support of an Amazon Community

How This Works

As part of the TRANSFORM Support Hub, you will learn how to advance your career while getting hands on experience on projects like this one.

Project Description and Impact

The Llikchary Institute supports the goals of the indigenous community of Sani Isla in the Amazon basin of Ecuador as they work toward self-sufficiency. The community seeks a sustainable integration of 21st century advantages with the conservation of their forest and traditional culture. To help them achieve those goals, we have built a center for sharing knowledge, skills and expertise between visitors and community members. Moving forward, we will support high-priority community projects by creating programs to bring in required knowledge and skills training, by using revenue from visitors and donations to help fund projects, and by helping coordinate projects requiring outside support.

The Sani people want the knowledge and skills to innovate solutions and implement projects without being dependent upon or overly directed by outsiders. They want to preserve and teach the traditions and wisdom of the Sani Isla community before the older generations pass away. Thus far, the center has been built and, before COVID-19, classes have been held. Moving forward, we are ready to create our new programs for bringing necessary expertise to the community, for helping community members share knowledge among themselves, and for offering visitors a unique educational experience.

Our website currently is quite old and simple, addressing only the original campaign to raise funds to build the center. It no longer meets our needs. As an all-volunteer organization of otherwise-employed team members, we need help setting up the website as well as efficient, direct instruction for our team on maintaining and updating the site on our own. With a new website we can begin our outreach to potential visitors, and get our programs underway.

Learning Opportunity

A professional can expect to learn about the culture, history and experiences of an indigenous Amazon community as they navigate the 21st century. Volunteers will become familiar with the problems facing such communities, and the network of organizations and individuals working, with activism and creativity, to solve these problems. When our Program Director is able to attend virtual meetings (his access to the internet is inconsistent), the experteer will be able to meet members of the community and learn directly from them.

Additional Benefits

Should any volunteer, past or present, choose the community of Sani Isla as a travel destination in the future, they are invited to participate in classes and programs at the Llikchary Institute tuition-free. In addition, they will receive a special welcome from Llikchary staff in the community. We are also open to a longer-term relationship if our volunteers wish it.

We are happy to provide volunteers letters of reference - and, should they wish to explore work in this area beyond the Llikchary Institute we will help them network with organizations and individuals with similar missions.