Fundación Cimas del Ecuador (Cimas) is a non-profit organization focused on the profound study of the environmental, developmental, and health problems of Ecuador .

Through academic discipline, and the participatory research-action, the Fundacion Cimas del Ecuador attempts to facilitate answers to some of the problems that affect our society and particularly to the least favored sectors. It supports processes of transference of knowledge, technology and resources, to potentiate the local capacity of resolution, where organized social groups become the ones to construct their own models of development.

The Foundation Cimas del Ecuador develops three types of fundamental programs:

•  Academic, associated with Ecuadorian and North American universities.

•  Investigative, epidemiological and community support.

•  Support to marginal, urban and rural communities.

Through our academic, research and community support programs, more profound learning processes are generated, about the impacts that the models of “development” have produced over different cultural groups in our country. We develop projects of participatory research, from simple observations of reality, to processes of scientific research and, through that, we intend to support and concrete alternative solutions to the main environmental, economical, social and health problems that affect the majority of the population and the concrete groups with which we work at the local level. Most of the students´ internships take place in those settings.