Distribute Donated Clothes & Goods in Rural Panama

Summer in North American coincides with the Wet Season in Panama. The Wet Season begins in April and continues through December, with the weather getting progressively wetter as time passes. While the Wet Season is good for crops and the ecosystem in Panama, it is not an ideal time for LARN to conduct a donation distribution trip to remote rural Panama, especially after August. Many of the 'roads' we use to access the remote communities we serve become impassable as the Wet Season progresses. Likewise, we often have to cross rivers to access these remote communities, and those river crossings are now too dangerous to attempt until the water levels drop.

What does this mean for our project?  We had hoped to conduct the donation distribution trip by the end of this month in an effort to beat the worst of the Wet Season, but will be unable to do so due to lack of funding. Though LARN has been hard at work both on Global Giving and with an off-line raffle and other fundraisers, we are still over $8,000 away from our fundraising goal to complete this project. That means our trip will have to be postponed until after the Wet Season ends. There are pros and cons to this postponement. The benefit is that we have a few more months to fully fund the project and coordinate the details of the donation distribution trip. The downside is that the boxes of donations already shipped to Panama will be stored for a few more months and the individuals in the communities we serve will have to wait to receive them.

We are tentatively rescheduling the donation distribution trip for mid-February 2015, dependent upon funding. We plan to send five volunteers from the U.S. and gather local volunteers to transport the contents of the 543 boxes to at least six remote communities. We typically choose the communities in advance, and work with their leadership to communicate the date we will be arriving and solicit their assistance in selecting a central location for us to set up and to communicate with their community members that we are coming. Our volunteers separate the boxes (which are sorted before shipping) to ensure that a variety of donated goods are distributed in each community we will visit. The boxes and volunteers are transported from our home base to the communities we serve in four-wheel-drive pickup trucks, which are required to access the remote locations that most desperately need help.

We could use your help in connecting us with other potential donors to help us complete this project and spreading the word in your personal networks. Do you have ideas to help us complete our fundraising? We would love to hear them! Feel free to email us at info@larnhope.org