The ROOTS Fellowship Foundation, fiscally sponsored by Modern Spirit, has announced funding for four new projects aimed at preserving Indigenous spiritual traditions in Colombia, Kenya, and Gabon. The foundation, whose acronym stands for Reviving Our Origins, Traditions & Spirit, was established by co-founders Salome Augustine Bissa Kopasz, Krisztian Kopasz, and Marvin Vivas Rodriguez. The initiative focuses on supporting education and community-led healing programs that keep ancestral knowledge rooted in local governance and cultural integrity.
The urgency of the work is underscored by the global reality that approximately 1,500 Indigenous languages and their associated knowledge are at risk of disappearing. Communities speaking these languages collectively steward 40% of the world’s remaining intact forests, yet their knowledge keepers face what international observers have described as a grave risk of physical and cultural extermination. ROOTS addresses this crisis by empowering elders, spiritual leaders, and their chosen successors with resources, avoiding outside frameworks and working from within each community.
Each supported project identifies a lineage holder and their apprentice, covering basic living and educational costs to allow full immersion in spiritual training—a years-long commitment that cannot be combined with conventional employment. As co-founder Marvin Vivas Rodriguez stated, “These traditions are not museum pieces. They are living systems of healing that entire communities depend on. We are here to ensure the next generation of lineage holders can actually do their work.”
The four active projects span Africa and South America. In Colombia, the Inga Community in Putumayo holds monthly traditional wisdom workshops for 40-50 students in midwifery, traditional arts, and medicinal preparation, alongside communal Yagé ceremonies conducted by Taitas from both the High and Low Putumayo. The Arhuaco Community in Sasaima supports Mamo Lorenzo Izquierdo, an internationally recognized Arhuaco spiritual leader, and funds the complete training of his son as the community’s future Mamo—a lifelong vocation demanding total dedication with no conventional income.
In Kenya, the Duruma Community in Kwale County focuses on protecting the Duruma Kaya lineage and its sacred forest traditions, supporting mganga Baba Mwatela Masai and his successor daughter, Sipi Mwatela, through her multi-year apprenticeship encompassing healing drums, herbal knowledge, and ceremonial practice. In Gabon, the Y’azo Leyissa Academy in Bilandzambi, founded by Yorick Ossavou Mombo—who credits traditional Gabonese medicine with his own recovery from addiction—offers 11 preparatory modules in ritual practice, plant knowledge, and Iboga medicine to 25 students per academic year.
ROOTS Fellowship Foundation is currently accepting donations through its fiscal sponsor, Modern Spirit, a registered 501(c)(3) organization. All contributions are tax-deductible for U.S. donors. To support a project or learn more, visit www.rootsfellowshipfoundation.org. For more information on the fiscal sponsor, visit modernspirit.org.
