Maha

The change must start at the root.

Most plant-based education programmes exist in Europe and North America. Almost nothing exists in the countries that produce and export the majority of the world’s meat, dairy, and live animals: Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, India.These are the places where food culture change has the highest impact on the entire planet. And they are the places the global movement has largely ignored.In these countries, legislation cannot be relied upon. Governments are navigating poverty, inequality, and institutional fragility. The only strategy that works here is culture change through education, starting with children, while their hearts and minds are still open.

“When you reach children before the world has told them what to think, you are not just teaching. You are guiding them toward who they could be.”

Four tools. One ecosystem.

The School Curriculum

A free, downloadable educational programme for primary and secondary schools, available in the local language of each country. Any motivated teacher can implement it without a nearby sanctuary or special budget. It covers animal sentience, plant-based nutrition, food systems, and cultural identity around food.

Proyecto Fox

A real inspirational superhero for children: Bhimal Fox Turner, born and raised inside Juliana’s Animal Sanctuary, plant-based since birth, hockey player, musician, and strong student. Produced with vegan filmmaker Juan Faundez, Proyecto Fox shows children and parents everywhere what a plant-based childhood looks like in real life.

The Sanctuary Network

Partner sanctuaries across Latin America and the Global South serve as certified educational centres, where children meet the animals they have been taught to see as food. That encounter, guided with intention, changes something that no worksheet can replicate.

Family Cooking Workshops

Free plant-based cooking workshops for parents and caregivers, delivered in person and available as videos in multiple languages. Because the change a child brings home needs somewhere to land. Plant-based eating is affordable, culturally familiar, and nutritionally complete.

Children change families. Families change the world.

Research in developmental psychology consistently shows that children who form meaningful relationships with animals develop greater empathy, stronger prosocial behaviour, and better conflict resolution skills.We have seen it firsthand across 16 years and 12+ schools: children who visit the sanctuary come back wanting to volunteer, bring food donations, and change what their families eat. The child changes. Then the family changes.

Built from the field. Not from the theory.

Juliana Castañeda Turner

Founder and Director

34 years in animal welfare and education. Founder of the only GFAS-verified sanctuary in South America. International Programs Coordinator at Food Yoga International. Degrees in Pedagogy and Pedagogy in Physical Sciences. Gold Medal animal welfare protector. Elected member of Colombia’s Municipal Council for Peace and Human Rights. Creator of Maha since 2009.

Paola Velasco

Director of Operations

Industrial designer and project coordinator with direct experience inside both founding organisations. Served as project and personnel coordinator at Juliana’s Animal Sanctuary, and as project coordinator at Food Yoga International for two years. Brings the design thinking and operational systems needed to scale a proven field model into a replicable global programme.

Juan Faundez

Visual Content and Proyecto Fox

Vegan filmmaker with extensive experience producing short films and printed materials for plant-based and animal advocacy causes. Longtime collaborator of Juliana’s. Leads all visual, film, and multimedia content development for Maha, including Proyecto Fox.