By Roberta Ward Smiley | Founder and President of LRFF
This project has a bittersweet story. Chocüaco was the nickname of Jose Luis Villalobos, a much loved local farmer, attorney and bus company owner. Many of you won’t remember LRFF’s participation in the global Giving Open Challenge last year. By receiving over $4000 from a minimum of 50 unique donors we won a permanent place on the GG philanthropic website. Thus, you are reading about our work here. The initial project we posted for the Challene fell through due to a family problem. We scrambled around to find another, small biological corridor project that we could replace it with. Ana Cecilia Villalobos (Chocüaco’s wife) had expressed her interest in participating in a corridor project with LRFF. We call her and set up an appointment with Jose to have a look at his farm. Jose (Chocüaco) met Daniel and I at the farm on Friday afternoon. He showed us an area that he felt would make a perfect corridor, connecting two forest patches on his property. We decided to meet again the following week to firm up the plan. Sunday, less than two days later, Tilarán’s beloved Chocüaco, died suddenly of a massive coronary. Shocked and hurt, missing him and wanting to do right by him, we postponed our pans for the corridor out of respect for his great family. We settled on the David Alvarez property for the corridor, http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/connecting-forest-islands-in-costa-rica/ and that has now been planted for eight months. The next time I saw Ana Cecilia, now Chocüaco’s widow, a few months later she was enthusiastic about continuing with his dream of conserving his property. Please help us to make this families small corridor the first of many on this beautiful farm. Donate this coming Wednesday, June 16th. All donations will be matched by 50%, from 12 midnight to 11:59pm (EST). LET’S GET PLANTING CHOCÜACO’S PLACE!!
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