{e • mat • tan}
/pronunciation/ ee-mat-awn
Gift; something given voluntarily without payment in return, as to show favor toward someone, honor an occasion, or make a gesture of assistance; present.
The act of giving.
The Gift of Eden
The Garden of Eden was a Gift — the habitat where life thrives.
No trees grew until there were caretakers to nurture the garden.
As humans cultivated all the life of the garden, life cared for them in return.
Our Vision
We apply nature’s own design principles to build communities in Tanzania that sustain themselves — generating food, renewing resources, and income without ongoing outside funding. The goal: systems that multiply on their own, delivering food, water, shelter, education, healthcare, and income to people who need them.
Each property develops agriculture suited to its land and people, then builds education around that specialty.
We build hands-on schools for youth — labs, real skills, extracurriculars. One so far.
Every property will include a farm-to-table hotel, generating income and training locals in hospitality.
Profits fund two new properties, restarting the cycle — growth without strain on any one community.
Emattan Adventure Trips will bring in volunteers to build alongside locals, learn nature’s design principles, and see the system work firsthand.
Our Story
Emattan began in 2008, when Steve and Shawna Nauert opened their California home to Tanzania students — and the friendship that formed became a promise to help their communities back home. What started as micro-finance for small businesses grew, by necessity, into support for a vital medical clinic. Today that promise has grown further: a vision for a network of self-sustaining Tanzanian communities, each equipped to provide for the other.
Where We Are
Built
Our well reaches a deep reservoir that now supplies clean water to the surrounding community. Our first school building opened in September 2023 — enrollment has grown to roughly 300 students, and a second school building was constructed in 2025. On campus, we’ve added a sewing room, and have started brick-making using the beautiful red Tanzania soil.
Underway
We’re mapping the full 25-acre property to guide its future: 16 acres set aside for agriculture school — orchard and livestock areas for chickens, goats, and pigs, aquaponics, bees, crops, herbs and medicinals — and 9 flat acres for our elementary, secondary, and vocational schools. Plans for the ponds, roads connecting the campus, and an artisan market walkway are taking shape alongside this.
Ahead
Our vocational program will expand into woodwork, metalwork, masonry, culinary, arts, textiles, computer skills, and business training — alongside a welcome center, bungalows, a farm-to-table kitchen/dining hall, and food processing facilities, creating a self-sustaining loop where the land feeds the school and trains the students who work it. Longer-term, this property will include a home for orphans and single mothers, woven into the same rhythm of caring for people, nature, and the future that guides everything we build here.
One Living System
As the property matures, we’re building toward a fully integrated system — livestock, aquaponics, and gardens working together to enrich the soil, feed the community, and sustain the school. Local families will manage these systems directly, and our on-site hospitality will help fund the work while teaching visitors what regenerative land care looks like.