Breathing smoke from burning firewood and spending money every day to obtain it was part of the daily life of Eula Ortéz, a 71-year-old housewife from the community of Bañaderos, Teupasenti, El Paraíso.

Henry Rael has been with the McCune Charitable Foundation, a strong supporter of TWP’s work in New Mexico, for more than 13 years. As the director of strategy and initiatives, Henry has been instrumental in helping position the foundation as a leader in deeply collaborative, trust-based approaches to grant making.

Amidst the economic turmoil of USAID closures, tariffs, deportations, and other shifts in Mesoamerica, the need to invest in resilient economies has become even more clear. The region’s long-term stability will come from supporting the communities who know it best, and many of those communities are already finding ways to sustain their livelihoods while also protecting their landscapes, culture, and people.

In June, TWP’s Indigenous Lands Program team participated in a 3-day staff retreat with our partner, Montezuma Land Conservancy. Bringing together 6 staff from each team in Cortez, CO, the retreat focused on visiting sites of the traditional harvest program and river restoration structures, planning shared work in coming years, and celebrating our new joint staff member, Wyatt Wilson. TWP’s ILP resource coordinator, Zoe Bashkin, shares her experiences and insights from her days with the team

A little over a month ago I got to visit some dear old friends in Honduras that I’ve known for over 20 years. I have photos of Isis, (in the cherry shirt), as a toddler running around the Santos-Mata farm in central Honduras, and remember building one of my first Justa stoves in Fanny and Gerardo’s kitchen. 

This spring, members of the TWP team had the honor of attending an annual blessing for the local bison herd of Soapstone Prairie. Led by elders and spiritual leaders from various Tribes, the blessing was part of honoring land, reaffirming culture, and recognizing the crucial role of bison in both.

Before the Spanish conquest, many Indigenous communities throughout Mesoamerica maintained communal structures of land ownership and management, some of which inspired Mexico’s contemporary ejidos. Though ejidos were outlawed in the 19th century, land reform reinstated the system, resulting in the return of significant land areas to Indigenous communities throughout Mexico in the 1970s.

Diane Vella has been with Trees, Water & People for more than 17 years, keeping our programs running, our staff paid, and our office dogs well-loved.

Trees, Water & People (TWP) is honored to have received the “Transformative Partner” award in recognition of our Indigenous Lands Program’s (ILP) work in New Mexico towards water resilience, multi-stakeholder facilitation and long-term watershed scale restoration planning. 

On Wednesday June 4th, following the eruption of Volcán de Fuego, 163 families from the community of la Nueva Trinidad were once again forced to flee their homes to seek shelter. 

Our growing practice of trust-based philanthropy, made possible by our incredible funding partners, keeps this understanding central. In addition to long-term and unrestricted support, trust-based philanthropy encourages reporting processes that reduce burdens upon organizations, ultimately freeing more staff time and resources for direct support to communities. 

This week, Indigenous youth crews from the Ancestral Lands and Southwest Conservation Corps are carrying out TWP-supported efforts in Southwest Colorado to restore degraded areas of the Mancos river. Much of this riparian corridor is managed under conservation easement, and new collaborations with private landowners are facilitating restoration activities within some of the most impacted stretches.

The dry season in Central America, which extends from January to April, presents a high risk of forest fires every year; March and April are usually the most critical months. In 2024, this situation worsened considerably with the presence of the El Niño phenomenon, which raised temperatures to historic levels.

In April, we had an incredible week in Mexico visiting our newest partner, Red Mexicana de Organizaciones Campesinas Forestales (Red MOCAF). Amidst inspiring trips to see their work in action, we also learned more about the incredible people who’ve kept the organization running for nearly 3 decades – amongst them, Gustavo Sánchez Valle, Red MOCAF’s president.

It is hard to keep your head above the rising water these days. Every day, I wake up thinking about the state of the world, humanity, our planet, and the future generations.

More than 25 years ago, Paul and Marilyn Thayer received a postcard from Trees, Water & People seeking donations for our clean cookstoves program. What started, in their words, as a “modest contribution” has grown into decades of close relationship and avid support.

La Bendición, “the blessing,” is a rural community in the Guatemalan highlands, formed by more than 80 Maya families. After being displaced from their homes amidst Guatemala’s Civil War, these families came together in 2000 to purchase a communal land base and rebuild their livelihoods.

Nearly 2,500 Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir seedlings have a new home in the greenhouse at Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS), owned and operated by the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico. The SFIS Community Based Education (CBE) department has integrated the seedlings in efforts to create hands-on learning opportunities with Native students.

On March 4-6, within the ancestral homelands of the Mescalero Apache Tribe, Trees, Water & People had the privilege of co-hosting the 2025 New Mexico Tribal Forest & Fire Summit.

We appreciate all of our supporters who joined us on April 4th for the first of our quarterly webinars, The Path Forward – we’re always so inspired by the incredible group of people behind us.