Spirituality inspires trip to aid Ecuadoran women

MARLBOROUGH — To a soundtrack of melodic chanting, Norma Nakai Burton waved a small branch of burning sage and gently fanned perfumed smoke over the women's arms, legs, and feet.

The exercise was meant to awaken the senses and marked the beginning of activities last weekend introducing a group of women from the area to shamanism, an earth-based spirituality based on teachings of consciousness and giving.

It's one of the ways members of the group are preparing for a trip next month to Ecuador, where they will help local female entrepreneurs build small businesses.

"I had this feeling that I really wanted to travel outside my own culture," said Nancy Cantor, an Ashland business consultant who helped organize last weekend's event and will go on the trip. "I just felt like a different perspective would be so valuable."

The group is making the two-week mission with the Alliance for Cultural and Economic Exchange, a nascent Somerville-based nonprofit that aims to promote cultural and economic partnerships between Americans and people in other countries.

While the mission itself has a practical purpose, Carol Madsen, who helped found the alliance, noted that the spiritual nature of last weekend's event, at Employment Options in Marlborough, a social service agency, ties in to the group's work in Ecuador, where shamanism plays a role in local culture.

"This helps us appreciate it more," Madsen said. "We really want to honor the wisdom of the indigenous people."

The alliance was established about a year ago. It grew largely out of Madsen's interests in economic sustainability, multicultural exchange, and ecotourism -- interests that she hopes to share with others.

The group focused on Ecuador through the connections and knowledge of former board member Joyce Ferranti, who died in October. Organizers began building their own relationships with the country on a "fact-finding mission" in September, Madsen said, and have identified a rainforest community called Rio Blanco, as well as several female entrepreneurs in Quito that they hope to support.

Exactly how the group will offer that support is part of what will be determined on next month's trip.

"We can actually say, 'OK, this is what we can do, this is what we can accomplish,' " Madsen said.

The women they will meet with have small enterprises selling handicrafts or raising chickens, she said.

Kathleen Mills, a Leominster-based business relations consultant, is one of the women going on the trip. She is looking forward to learning more about the business environment of another country.

"We're a global economy today," Mills said. "You can't ignore the fact that business is being done everywhere."

As Employment Options, which promotes self-sufficiency, expands its services and begins working with people from Latin America, executive director Toni Wolf said she is interested in learning about a new culture. Although she will lend her background to help the people she meets in Ecuador, she also notes how much she learned in the past by teaching aboriginal children in Australia.

"I remember learning more from them than they ever learned from me," Wolf said.

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