By Lucas Metropulos | President
Every year, thousands of Americans travel to the beautiful country of the Bahamas. They stay in lavish hotels, enjoy beautiful beaches and taste some great local Bahamian food. This large tourism sector of the Bahamian economy supports hundreds of jobs and infuses much needed cash into their economy. However, tourists often do not see or realize the true poverty that exists only a half a mile from where they are swimming and having fun.
For the past seven years, I have been travelling to Nassau at first as a normal teenage American tourist. But, now I travel to Nassau at least 5 times per year to help facilitate programs and to bring together a wide array of individuals to address critical needs in the inner-city area of Nassau. Together we developed a foundation called Lend a Hand Bahamas to be able to better address the needs of the people and to garner greater support from individuals in the Bahamas as well as in America.
Two years ago we set out on a mission to raise the necessary funds to build a community center in the heart of this severely disadvantaged area where we primarily work. Along the way, we realized that the immediate need is so great that we started to focus our efforts on providing programs and events to the youth now rather than wait until a center could be built. We have hosted summer camps, provided school supplies, facilitated basketball tournaments, sponsored a young lady to compete in a international track & field competition, created new and exciting field trips, and now we are developing a college scholarship program to be implemented shortly.
Our long-term goal is to still build the community center in the community and we have decided that any and all funds that come in through this fundraising page will go directly towards such an effort. We currently have the necessary land and approved design plans.
I want to thank you again for your generous contribution towards this very important and much needed project and I encourage you to check out our website: www.lendahandbahamas.org and if you can please consider giving again during this important end of the year fundraising period. Lastly, I also want to encourage you to like our Facebook page: "Lend a Hand Bahamas" to stay up to date on the different projects we are doing.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
