Dr. Ben Mathes

Speaking/Consultation Areas: Exploring Africa, Central America: from war to peace, from BangladeshEast, and Understanding Haiti

Presentation Style: Thoroughly entertaining and knowledgeablepresenter using many vivid stories from personal experience

Look out Indiana Jones, Dr. Ben Mathes is a man with a mission, and that mission has become his life's work. Since 1978, Ben has traveled the world on behalf of international health development and explorations.

Ben is the director of Rivers of the World (ROW), an internationalexploration and development agency that targets remote river basins. Throughhis work he has traveled in the forests of Belize, Cameroon, Zambia, Zimbabwe,and Taiwan, to name a few. Through ROW, Ben has documented lifestyles,health conditions, politics, eroding landscapes, endangered animals, andfuture possibilities in Africa, Central America, Southeast Asia, Bangladesh,Haiti and the Orient! On one of his most recent expeditions, Ben took 12men 200 miles down the San Kuru River of Zaire. He, along with his staff,is responsible for a program that has cured over 10,000 cases of river blindness.

Ben hosts a weekly syndicated radio program of his adventures entitled"Rivers of the World." In the summer of 1996, Ben debuted a collectionof his photography in a fine art poster series and released an audio-bookentitled "Lessons from the Forest." Your students and staff willagree with Henry Hurt, the Reader's Digest editor, who said ofBen, "He is the most exciting speaker I have ever heard!!"