MAYA EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

MEF's aim is to promote educational opportunities for the Maya people in the countries we serve.

There is a great hunger in the young Maya people to better their fates and to become successful in their societies. We support the students' heritage and culture while giving them the opportunity to have access to higher education.

We are convinced that with a good education, the Maya students and graduates will be better equipped to make good lives for themselves right in their home countries. Long-term, these efforts will combat poverty, malnutrition and other ills that still plague the indigenous communities in the countries we serve.

MEF has a special interest in helping girls and women and students from rural areas. We support workshops that bring informal education to rural areas where many women have never had any or just a few years of formal education. Topics may include marketing their woven products, collaborating in groups to be stronger, cultural and medical knowledge.

MEF also believes in fostering Maya cultural and historical awareness and respecting the Maya languages, traditions and values. MEF supports the cultural institution CIRMA in Antigua, Guatemala in their preservation efforts of Central American heritage.

Our main strategy to success is that we partner with local Maya project leaders in the region we serve and put them and other qualified community members in charge of the criteria of the scholarship programs and for running them locally, with MEF site visits and regular contacts and reports from the leaders and the students.

We raise funds and regularly appeal to the US and international public for donations. We receive support from organizations and individual donors who know the region we work in and understand that the Mayas as a whole still face many obstacles on their way to becoming equal citizens in their countries, with equal opportunities.

We connect to our audience by sharing students' stories with the public and by showing graduates. We have steadily and greatly improved our outreach via Facebook, Instagram and e-Bulletins. See www.mayaedufound.org We've helped to bring groups and students to the US who gave theater performances and talks, which were very well received. We'll do more of that as we can find the funding for such cultural exchange activities.

With a very small, mostly still donated, staff we work with our volunteer Board of Directors, our project supervisors in the countries we serve, an assistant in Guatemala, a consultant, and other volunteers to get work done that other organizations have more staff for.

Through direct fundraising efforts - grant applications and public outreach (Bulletins, Newsletters, Social Media), we receive grants and donations. We also receive major funding each year from our supporting organization, the Plumsock Fund, to which we have to apply each year anew.

Our Board members actively work on moving us forward by helping with fundraising and strategic planning. They all are familiar with the region, several have worked there, and almost all of them speak Spanish. They help by making site visits and speaking about us at conferences, esp. the Guatemala Scholars Network, LASA, and AAA.

The board also works on long-term tasks in committees, together with the Executive Director.

We hire extra specialized help as needed for website, secure donation processing (Network for Good) and more.

Hundreds of graduates from basico/middle school and high schools, including vocational high schools (accountants and teachers), and from universities in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.

Thousands of graduates from six- to eight-month indigenous literacy workshops in Chiapas, Mexico and from vocational training courses (sewing, carpentry, solar installations, etc.).

Hundreds of students learning English in yearly two-week courses US volunteers bring to Antigua, Guatemala PLUS NEW since 2021: Online English courses!

-We are increasingly developing partnerships also with other US nonprofits to boost our goal of providing university scholarships to Maya students (e.g. Starfish, Boys Hope Girls Hope, Grupo Cajola, Amigos de Santa Cruz).

-Each graduate in our programs is a great accomplishment. We have rich data about students and graduates from our programs that await our longitudinal data committee's sorting and interpreting and seeing if we can't follow the graduates for a few years after graduation. This is a work in progress.

In 2020, we were able to overhaul and completely redesign our website with a web designer in Guatemala. Previously homemade, do visit at: www.mayaedufound.org

In 2020, the start of the pandemic, we had amazing donors, some foundations and many individuals, even asking us what help specifically was needed. The greatest need for our educational mission was to see which students would fall through the cracks due to a lack of technology, not allowing them to connect to online learning. The greatest hardship cases were brought to us after an analysis by the in-country supervisors and we are proud to say that we were able to thus far equip 13 students in Chiapas, Mexico and 27 students in Guatemala with brand-new, good quality but not fancy, laptops. We could not be more appreciative of our supporters for coming through on these two Bridging the Digital Divide campaigns that we launched mid-2020.

2021 has started with some of our programs a bit uncertain about when students would be able to return to their schools and universities. Other program partners have gradually opened up again already, ever careful and taking all precautions. We accompany them each step and support their special efforts to keep students focused.

In 2021 we started a Pilot Project for medical students at University Rafael Landivar in Coban.

MEF goals for 2022-25 included redesign and rewriting of our MEF brochure (done) and vigorously increasing MEF's social media presence on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn (in process of growth).

2022 marks our 30th year as a nonprofit. We are working harder than ever to give Maya students in Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize a chance at a university or high-school (college-prep or vocational) education. More and more we have peeled away the layers of other projects and are concentrating on that goal, as it's the hardest to achieve.

JOIN US in this effort!