Building local capacity is one of the foundational concepts in Shanta Village Partners’ six-year Village Partnership Model. It reflects our belief that lasting change happens when communities gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence to lead their own development. From the beginning, our goal has been to ensure that villagers, not outside organizations, are [...]
Our partnership villages in Zambia launched the Women Action Group (WAG) initiative, a program adapted from Shanta’s long-running Women’s Group Discussion model in Myanmar (active since 2010). Shanta’s Global Program Manager, Khai, first trained our Zambian staff in May 2025, who then equipped 16 local women leaders to begin facilitating the program. The response was [...]
Team Member Spotlight Lamba Fikoloma, M & E Officer with People’s Action Forum Meet Lamba! He joined Shanta/PAF earlier in 2025 as our Monitoring and Evaluation Officer. He works closely with Khai, Shanta’s Global Program Manager, as well as Janet, Zambia’s Program Manager, to ensure proper tracking, assessment, and evaluation of programs in Zambia. We [...]
Francina Kobela is 55 years old and has two adult children, both women whose education stopped by grade 9. She is a true leader in her community, and upon her village, Nachili, partnering with Shanta in 2023, she was quickly elected a Village Development Team (VDT) member. She has never shied away from speaking up [...]
Nang Pe’s Story My name is Nang Pe, and I live in Ga Naing Nge West village. I have three children, and my husband is Khun Lan. We grow cheroot leaves that we use to make cigars. When I was pregnant with my last child, I took prenatal vitamins from our Village Nurse Midwife (VNM), [...]
Meet Janet Nyoni, Program Manager for People’s Action Forum, Shanta’s implementing partner organization in Zambia. How long have you worked for PAF? Did you work for another organization prior to PAF and if so, what were your responsibilities there and how did it prepare you for your current position? I have been involved with PAF [...]
Nang No, a 33-year-old mother from Htee Kan Laung is one of five family members with only an elementary education. Her three children are all in school: the oldest is 15 years old, the second is 13 years old, and the youngest is 5 years old. Her family’s income is from traditional farming- enough to [...]
We just received a packet of letters from sponsored boarding school students and love reading about their experiences! All these children are financially supported by dedicated donors through a Shanta program offering a brighter future via education at a private boarding school in Yangon that is far away from our partner villages. As it is [...]
After much research, baseline data collection, and engagement with a host of local leaders (elected and tribal) in Zambia, we have selected three villages to partner with; village launches will take place in the coming weeks. Shanta staff have visited this area and seen the conditions there...dire. Here is one example, the primary school in the [...]
Chatbots? ChatGBT? We are hearing a lot about these technological advances in the news and most of us have interacted with them upon searching for customer service on the web. Basically, they are artificial intelligence programs that can produce human-like conversations with a prompt question. They can assist us in composing emails, writing articles, code [...]
Building local capacity is one of the foundational concepts in Shanta Village Partners’ six-year Village Partnership Model. It reflects our belief that lasting change happens when communities gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence to lead their own development. From the beginning, our goal has been to ensure that villagers, not outside organizations, are [...] 
Our partnership villages in Zambia launched the Women Action Group (WAG) initiative, a program adapted from Shanta’s long-running Women’s Group Discussion model in Myanmar (active since 2010). Shanta’s Global Program Manager, Khai, first trained our Zambian staff in May 2025, who then equipped 16 local women leaders to begin facilitating the program. The response was [...] 
Team Member Spotlight Lamba Fikoloma, M & E Officer with People’s Action Forum Meet Lamba! He joined Shanta/PAF earlier in 2025 as our Monitoring and Evaluation Officer. He works closely with Khai, Shanta’s Global Program Manager, as well as Janet, Zambia’s Program Manager, to ensure proper tracking, assessment, and evaluation of programs in Zambia. We [...] 
Francina Kobela is 55 years old and has two adult children, both women whose education stopped by grade 9. She is a true leader in her community, and upon her village, Nachili, partnering with Shanta in 2023, she was quickly elected a Village Development Team (VDT) member. She has never shied away from speaking up [...] 
Nang Pe’s Story My name is Nang Pe, and I live in Ga Naing Nge West village. I have three children, and my husband is Khun Lan. We grow cheroot leaves that we use to make cigars. When I was pregnant with my last child, I took prenatal vitamins from our Village Nurse Midwife (VNM), [...] 
Meet Janet Nyoni, Program Manager for People’s Action Forum, Shanta’s implementing partner organization in Zambia. How long have you worked for PAF? Did you work for another organization prior to PAF and if so, what were your responsibilities there and how did it prepare you for your current position? I have been involved with PAF [...] 
Nang No, a 33-year-old mother from Htee Kan Laung is one of five family members with only an elementary education. Her three children are all in school: the oldest is 15 years old, the second is 13 years old, and the youngest is 5 years old. Her family’s income is from traditional farming- enough to [...] 
We just received a packet of letters from sponsored boarding school students and love reading about their experiences! All these children are financially supported by dedicated donors through a Shanta program offering a brighter future via education at a private boarding school in Yangon that is far away from our partner villages. As it is [...] 
After much research, baseline data collection, and engagement with a host of local leaders (elected and tribal) in Zambia, we have selected three villages to partner with; village launches will take place in the coming weeks. Shanta staff have visited this area and seen the conditions there...dire. Here is one example, the primary school in the [...] 
Chatbots? ChatGBT? We are hearing a lot about these technological advances in the news and most of us have interacted with them upon searching for customer service on the web. Basically, they are artificial intelligence programs that can produce human-like conversations with a prompt question. They can assist us in composing emails, writing articles, code [...]