By Alejandra Monge | Executive Director
The thought of children crossing the Rio Drake river unassisted in order to make it to school haunts my nights. For years and years children from El Progreso have been forced to walk more than 4 miles and cross a moody river to be able to go to their high school. 2 years ago I witness a father trying to cross that river with the water to the height of his chest and his 3 year old child on his shoulders. He stumbled and nearly fell, we had to cover our mouth in terror! The father decided to turn back and find shelter, he was not going home that night. This year that river kept El Progreso isolated from civilization during the month monsoon month of November, which had crowned with the Hurricane Otto. The community lacked supplies, school was cancelled and there was no access to medical treatments or emergency attention. This year with your help and the help of people like you we are building a pedestrian bridge between Progreso and Drake Bay. The Interamerican Foundation is allowing us to use the remaining funding from the FACOSA/Osa Community Support Funding to build this hanging bridge. This bridge will allow children to walk safely to school and the local people to commute to work and to see the local doctor without risking their lives.
On April 3rd we are having a meeting with the local community in order to organize the matching funds from the community. Their contribution will be their hard work. The foundation will allocate $9,000 USD for materials. The project should be completed in June 2017.
The Corcovado Foundation, with the support of the Interamerican Foundation has allocated $38,000 USD dollars to community development projects. These projects ranging from funding micro projects to building drinking water systems in isolated communities. This project has helped many communities to greatly improve their quality of life. The Osa Community Fund was created by our organization with funding from the InterAmerican Foundation earmarked for community projects. These monies have been given to grass roots groups after they have committed to match the value of the donation by providing man-hours, or similar inputs to the project. Due of the nature of this funding The Corcovado Foundation does not charge one dollar for its administration. Not having overhead costs means a larger investment in the communities we serve.
On behalf of our team, I want to express my deepest gratitude for your donations and support and I want to encourage you to keep informed of our activities and program through our facebook page at www.facebook.com/funcorco. Please help us help more communities by making a donation to this project on Globalgiving.
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