I just love it when I can give to a charity or mission that is relatively small, addresses specific needs, and has individual people you can actually contact who are directly involved in the organization, don't you? I personally just don't feel very good about giving my money to some giant charity with gobs of overhead and high administrative costs. The children at my daughter's Sunday School have done just that by partnering with their peers in the village of Lougou, Haiti for three years now.
Their current goal
is to raise between $1000-$6000 to cover the cost of building supplies for a
simple footbridge. The villagers are eager to do the labor to build it, they
just need help to cover the costs of building materials. The deadline for the children's fundraiser is
February 20th, so SkinKissed
Naturals has decided to donate a portion of all sales until the deadline to
join in the effort.
Lougou Haiti has a
population of 1500 packed into a 1.2 square mile radius. Most of the children walk to school and must
cross a river on the way. Ordinarily, they can wade across at the shallow spot,
but during the rainy season the river quickly rises, making it impassable and
dangerous. The kids can get stuck on the wrong side of the river and/or be
unable to get to school for up to several months.
COFHED is the
mission organization involved that is all about working with the people of
Lougou to identify goals/needs and empower them to reach community-led,
sustainable solutions. Read more about Lougou
and COFHED's approach and involvement here.
(Go to skinkissednaturals.com website)
Was this built? How did it go?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your interest! I was wondering the same thing a few months back. I was told the children raised about 1/8 of the money needed to build the bridge, but then as it turned out, another less expensive and safer option arose; an engineer from Duluth, MN went down to assess the situation and discovered the dam nearby could support a bridge. So now they are talking with the company that owns the dam and coming up with designs. Apparently this is a long process and the bridge is not yet built, but if everything goes as planned they hope to have it done within 2 years.
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