Giving back
#GivingTuesday is right around the corner! As we are on the cusp of the holiday season and our hearts are turned towards giving, helping others, and sharing the holiday spirit, we must acknowledge that the conveniences and privileges of the US are not reflected around the world. Colombians face challenges such as socioeconomic inequality, political instability, drug-related violence, and access to quality health care and education. These issues contribute to a complex landscape that many Colombians navigate daily.
On this Giving Tuesday, your charitable donations to the Foundation helps us do our part in navigating these pathways into Colombia. Your donations go to funding the Women’s program in Cartagena, providing clean water to villages, sending teams, paying educators, developing skills, and this year our goal of purchasing a house in Cartagena to house individuals in need and adding an additional women’s skill with a bakery program.
The women’s program
With the shifting socio, political, and economical landscapes of Colombia, there are plenty of avenues for the Foundation to navigate and build relationships with people and organizations on the ground level in Colombia. This includes employing educators to teach and come alongside the women in the Luchadora program, as well as each woman in the program graduating equipped with life changing skills to help further them and their families. These skills include hairdresser, nail technician and massage therapist. At graduation, each woman receives a kit with the necessary tools in their chosen skill field to return home and be able to provide for their family through the trade skill.
Each year the boundaries of this program are being widened to new neighborhoods, allowing for more women to be enrolled. Moving in to 2024 we are adding a new neighborhood, with more opportunities for more women. With your assistance in giving, we have the ability to purchase a full-on bakery set to teach an entirely new skill. The cost of the set is $4,500; the abilities this would allow us to teach more women= priceless! This gift would give for years to come!
Opportunities abound
Contributions of one-time giving or monthly donations also help fund clean water for villages throughout Colombia. Every year we are introduced to new communities who are waiting to receive the gift of clean water. With that, they have a changed life with better health. Clean water brings a cascade of transformative effects that extend far beyond quenching mere physical thirst. Health and sanitation are affected, agriculture is revitalized, educational opportunities increase and the community is brought together.
There is also a deep current of self-betterment and desire for a fuller future, as villages long for the equipment and instruments, like sewing machines, which are needed to further their community and its citizens. The need for access to improve, develop, grow and learn new skills are often denied, as they don’t have access to the every day tools. Your Giving Tuesday contribution can impact not only an individual, but their family and their entire community!
How to donate?
The Foundation is looking towards towards the future of our programs, the women in Colombia and the teams traveling. The future includes purchasing a home of our own in Cartagena. This location will house women in abusive situations, host teams coming in to the city and provide a long-term, more permanent location to facilitate our programs.
Every relationship and point of contact we develop and make through Colombia cannot happen without the help and support of you! This Giving Tuesday and Holiday season, will you consider giving a one-time donation towards our goals, giving support for the first time, or increase your monthly donation? Your donations will provide for our hopes and dreams of carrying hope to Colombia, one step at a time!
You can follow this link to make your #GivingTuesday donation.
*editor’s note: Post is written by Rebecca Groves, board member, Footprints with Hope
