Heifer Heroes - Mateo Paneitz

By World Ark and Heifer Staff
Illustrations by Chris Lyons

Whether it's opening schools for orphans, stopping human trafficking, building houses for the poor or teaching fellow farmers how to thrive, these Heifer Heroes are doing great things to help others. To read about each winner, click on the photos below:
	Twesigye Jackson Kaguri		Anuradha Koirala		Mateo Paneitz		Restituta and Isaya Mlewa

Mateo Paneitz
It took some time and a few false starts for Mateo Paneitz, 35, to find his calling. But a stint in the Peace Corps sparked a love for Guatemala, and his plan to help the country took shape.

Nothing in Mateo Paneitz's childhood prepared him for his present job, or the attention it brings him. Paneitz grew up in Lufkin, Texas, a small town two hours north of Houston. Today, he lives in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, where he is the executive director of Long Way Home, a nonprofit that recycles trash into green buildings.

The path to his current position includes a few detours, but in 2002, he joined the Peace Corps and was stationed in San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala, where he worked with the town's youth. They had no activities outside of school and work, and no future to speak of. There simply is not enough land for all of them to stay and be farmers, so many leave for the U.S. or Guatemala City, where gangs are rampant.

After the Peace Corps, Paneitz returned to the U.S. He knew he wanted to get back to Comalapa to help the youth, so he began filling out the paperwork to establish a nonprofit organization. "I didn't know anything," Paneitz said of the process. "I just took it one line at a time." And the first line was a stumper. "Line one was, 'What is the name of your organization?'" Paneitz had no idea, so he thumbed through his music CDs until he stumbled across one he liked. "Long Way Home" is the name of a Dwight Yoakam song.

In early 2005, Paneitz headed south. "Kerouac style, I bought a Volkswagen and rode down to Guatemala with two friends," he said. The group successfully built a soccer field and basketball court and a city park for area youth.

But Paneitz quickly realized that wasn't enough, so he turned his attention toward the everyday. How could he improve living conditions? He realized he could train locals in green building techniques, provide poor families with better housing and clean up the community, all at the same time.

Long Way Home began with simple building projects—finding ways to capture the rain from the roof, installing solar panels to generate electricity—that make a huge difference in the quality of life here, especially for children.

"The kids don't have to spend all day collecting firewood and water," Paneitz said. Now, children can stay in school, where they receive an education and learn a vocation. "That is what breaks the cycle of poverty."

Long Way Home (www.longwayhomeinc.org) is now building a vocational school, which will open in 2012. "It will be an appropriate technology center," Paneitz said, training locals in green construction methods but also in entrepreneurship.

So how does a small-town boy decide to do something like this? For Paneitz, aside from his experiences in the Peace Corps, it was by reading about others who made a difference, people like Nelson Mandela, Paul Farmer and Mohandas Gandhi. "I read about all these people and feel a tremendous responsibility to them," he said. Luckily for the people of Comalapa, Paneitz took the next step and turned his inspiration into action.

And he's not done yet. "I believe that anywhere there is dirt and rubbish, we can replicate this model."

— Jaman Matthews

Reader Nominations
Thank you to everyone who nominated their own Heifer Heroes, people who inspired with generosity, hard work and caring spirits.

Humanitarian and best-selling author Greg Mortenson garnered a Heifer Hero nomination from World Ark reader Kathleen Donnelly, who admires Mortenson's ability to work across cultural divides to provide education for girls in a part of the world where it's not uncommon for families to educate only their male children. Mortenson first won widespread attention in 2006 when he published Three Cups of Tea, an account of how an accident during his attempt to scale the world's second-highest mountain led him to a remote Pakistani village where he first made his pledge to open schools for girls.

Of course, not all of our heroes are household names. A co-worker at the sustainable agriculture organization The Land Institute nominated Sheila Cox, a young woman who lives her convictions. Cox's dedication to sustainable living shows in her choice of housing—a repurposed grain bin equipped with a rainwater collection system that feeds her garden. No car for Cox; she rides her bike everywhere she goes.

We heard about Dr. J. Mascarenhas, who earned a medical degree in Germany but returned to his home country of India to offer free medical care in remote villages. In addition to doctoring with his organization Pasam Trust, Mascarenhas throws himself at the tasks of raising money and recruiting fellow medical specialists to lend a hand.

Our youngest nominee was Gwendolyn Morgan, an 18-year-old high school senior in Townsend, Mass., whose dedication to ending hunger and poverty inspired her to organize a "Four Courses for a Cause" meal that raised $1,100 for Heifer International.

—Austin Bailey