Open Center International was formed as a sister organization to our first center, Centro Aberto de Nhamatsane (C.A.N, or Open Center Nhamatsane).  CAN is an open community center, health post, and preschool in the village of Nhamatsane, Mozambique. 

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Built from the ground up by local Mozambicans with a passion for change, C.A.N. provides services to hundreds of children and adults throughout the area. Over the course of a decade, C.A.N. has truly become the Center of the Community. It serves as a model organization for grassroots change world-wide by empowering every community member to stand up and fight for something better.

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As CAN grew over the years, we also grew and learned from our experiences - we find that the best people to tell you what a community needs are the people that live there.  We founded Open Center International with the goal of propagating the idea that true and sustainable development comes from empowerment of communities.  This is why our entire model is based on establishing sustainable income generating projects and community-to-community sharing of resources, rather than "have" to "have not" charity.