Mountains and Plains Institute

The San Benito Health Program supports community health workers for 25 rural communities in the Peten region of Northern Guatemala. The core health team, comprised of three full time advanced promotores and an accountant, maintains a clinic in the central area of the region to support the regional network of health workers and to provide clinical services to 10 to 15 patients each day. The clinic and rural communities provide primary health care services to 6500 people each year including women's health care, prenatal care, common childhood illnesses, nutrition and oral health. As well they provide consistent year round services to patients with chronic illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma. In 2023, over 3,500 general health clients were served.

Educational Travel Programs are provided in association with Elderhostel Inc., DBA Road Scholar a non-profit organization. In 2023, 311 individuals participated in 16 programs located across Colorado and Eastern Utah.

National park boundaries have separated local people from wildlife, both physically and psychologically, to the extent that human communities no longer know how to coexist with wildlife and do not perceive any benefit of protecting wild animals. This growing divide threatens the lives of humans and wildlife species, particularly elephants. The goal of our Ruaha National Park, Tanzania visitation program is to begin repairing the disconnect between humans and wildlife, by offering local people the opportunity to directly benefit from living near wildlife in the most intuitive and perhaps meaningful way possible: through personal experience. This program increases peoples' opportunities to enjoy positive experiences with wild animals, and has begun a foundation of support for wildlife conservation among local people. 740 individuals were served in 2023 in visitations, and nearly 1,300 local residents attended 25 educational movie nights in 18 villages. Other projects included erecting and maintaining 6 farm based bee hive fences, and introducing sustainable poultry farms.

Mountains and Plains Institute was honored to serve as the fiscal sponsor for a UK based charitable project operating in the African country of Malawi. The grant for this came from ZooMiami. The project is The Malawi Bat Conservation Project.