Mayan Hope is a non-profit corporation dedicated to providing educational, nutritional, medical, ecological, and other needed services to indigenous families, villages, and abandoned or abused children of Guatemala and other Latin American nations. They are a direct and hands-on charitable organization meaning that, as such, they work in close cooperation and side-by-side with the people in the communities where projects are located.
Education: Education is the foundation and primary purpose of Mayan Hope. They believe that education holds the key to the future for all. At present Mayan Hope is working with these educational projects:
- Special Education
- Central Education Center
- Student Exchange and College Scholarships
Environment: Mayan Hope is currently working to develop several projects to help in the preservation of the environment and the betterment of the communities in the Guatemalan highlands:
- Paper Firebricks
- Solar Ovens
- Composting Toilets
Health: Mobile Medical Unit and Training – Through some local contacts with an American medical team – Bryan and Riechelle Buchanan, Mayan Hope brings a mobile medical and dental unit into the local villages to perform minor medical and dental care. More complex cases than what they are equipped to handle from the mobile unit are referred to the hospital or doctors in Nebaj for follow-up.
Nutrition: Estimates are as high as 60 percent of the Mayan population here in Guatemala suffers from anemia or lack of protein in their diets. As much as 65 percent of the typical diet is corn based. To keep them from crying, mothers often feed their children nothing but sugar water for lack of any other food in the house. Proper nutrition and improperly balanced diets are a major problem. One of the goals at Mayan Hope is to improve this situation as much as possible. The immediate project that they are working on is the establishment of a soy milk production facility using a device called a SoyCow or VitaCow. They hope to provide each of the children in their schools with a daily quantity of soy milk as well as the pregnant and lactating women in the villages. Any excess product would be packaged and sold as a low cost and nutritional substitute for traditional milk and would be especially beneficial for those who are lactose intolerant. The sale of excess milk and other products produced from this facility could not only provide funding for the free milk provided to school children and pregnant mothers but could also help fund the overall project.
Economic Development: Nearly everything that Mayan Hope does in some way relates to economic development of the area. All of their projects require the employment of teachers or various local staff to work on the project. However there are some projects that they are trying to develop that specifically relate to economic development. These include:
- Development of New Farm Crops
- Solar Bakery
To learn more about Mayan Hope, please visit their website.
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