This last week was very busy. On Wednesday we distributed food with Donna to many different families in the barrios of San Lucas. A barrio is a spanish term for district or neighborhood. These neighborhoods are very poor, as you saw on the pics in our last blog, and they are all over. We had bags of candy in our car and as we drove along the dirt roads in these areas we would give it to the children that were playing outside. The smiles on their faces was priceless! A couple of men joined us that day to see what Donna was doing in these barrios. One being Ray Thomas. He is a man that has lived and volunteered in the Baja for the last 20 years. He founded the non-profit Grupo De Apoyo Ray Thomas(GART) in 1989 to provide sports equipment, clinics, coaching, and educational assistance to the children in these very low income areas. Over the years their efforts have extended to provide breakfast for the needy children. Most of his work has been in La Paz which is a couple of hours from Cabo San lucas. Since May '08 his efforts have been being focused on the Los Cabos area. It's amazing what this man has done and is doing. The soccer teams created through his organizations gives these children a sense of hope and allows them to belong to something. It also keeps them off the streets. In 2002 he founded the YES foundation (Youth Education Sports) another organization to help continue the efforts already establised by GART. Ray and his team of dedicated volunteers can not do any of this without support and donations. Each soccer team needs sponsors, and to sponsor a team it is only $2000 pesos, which is about $150 dollars...very cheap! For more information about Ray and his team they are on facebook...Grupo de Apoyo Ray Thomas A.C. / Y.E.S. If you go to the Info page and click on the link it gives more details about the soccer programs and the other things they do.
Wednesday night we went and picked up Lila from the Humane Society. We are fostering her while we are here. It was not something I was thrilled about, but I am completely in love with this dog now. So if I am we know Jen is, and I doubt we will just be fostering her for much longer. She is a really really good dog. She got her first spa day on Thursday and when we picked her up from being groomed and de-ticked we didn't even recognize her.
Thursday we were at the Center in the morning and spent the rest of the day by the pool. Yesterday we continued putting gifts together for the children for Christmas. All the items we have for the gifts have been donations people have shipped down here from the States to Donna. Most of the children will be getting a used piece of clothing and a beanie baby for Christmas this year since that is what the majority of the donations have been. There are some other toy items for the little children, but not much for the older ones. We are hoping to get soccer balls and more boys clothing before the end of the month.
2 comments:
YAY for Christmas! Lila is so precious!!!!!! I cannot WAIT to meet her!! ;O) I wish I was coming! :(
What exactly does lindo mean? never heard of it. and can you please respond on here to this comment? Can't wait to see Lila back here in December. TK, you should see if George's soccer team would want to sponsor a couple teams down there.
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