Our Influence

Our work places us as a pioneer organization in the use and conservation of the natural resourses, having an important influence in our country:

»  Thanks to the community projects that we have developed, at present 25 municipalities and more than 150 communities use their natural resources, producing an income and improving their quality of life.

» We have developed and supported more than 200 researches that allows us to know  the condition of our natural resources in order to make decisions.

» We have prepared more than 2,000 teachers with didactic skills that have the environment as main subject.  Also we have given environmental education to more than 300,000 Guatemalan children and young people of different social and economic levels.

» We designed and implemented the “Water Fund of the Motagua-Polochic System” a new way of paying the environmental services for the protection of the Motagua, Polochic and San Jerónimo rivers basins that supply ten municipalities and more than 400,000 people.

»  We have successfully carried out about 150 projects financed by organizations recognized internationally, as:  USAID, Royal Embassy of the Neatherlands, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, International Conservation, CARE (for its initials in Spanish), World Bank, Rainforest Alliance, etc.

In addition to our influence in the country, we are proud of the following achievements:

» We were the first NGO of Latin America to obtain the delegation to manage a national protected area:  the Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve in 1990.

» With our work we are responsible of 5% of the national territory, the 15% of the surface of protected areas in the country, the biological condition and wealth of more than 450,000 hectares of forest—almost the double in size of the department of Guatemala, and the 80% of the flora and fauna species reported in Guatemala.

»  Among the areas under our supervision there are two reserves of the program “The Man and the Biosphere” (MAB) of the United Nations and a RAMSAR wetland—Convention about the Wetlands of International Importance.

»  We have been benefited four times by the program Adopt an Acre of The Nature Conservancy –TNC-, making us a leader organization for this program.

» Thanks to the transparency and efficiency in the management and execution of the projects since 2003 we have been receiving direct funds from the USAID.

» We have received many awards and acknowledgements: