By Astrid Delleman | coordinator
Just imagine: 3 or 4 years from now the Ruach Foundation will have a well-functioning and popular spectacles shop in Juigalpa! Imagine also that we realized this dream because many people believed in our ability to make the dream come through and supported us! Wow, wouldn´t that be great!
At the moment the dream is just that: a dream. We’ve only just started. We are fine-tuning our project proposal although an early version was already sent out into different parts of the world. No dreams are fulfilled by just dreaming. Hard work is needed, and that’s what we are doing.
The first dream fulfilled: social programmes up and running…!
The core of the work since the Ruach Foundation started its social work, improving the lives of adults who live with intellectual disabilities, in earnest from mid-2016. We now provide a safe and caring home for 7 intellectually disabled adults (the ‘core members’). We also set up an Activities Centre for intellectually disabled adults living in Juigalpa. Although we have faced challenges, our individualized stimulation programs for those who were able to regularly attend have been successful. We also started an outreach programme to change the perception of how the society at large perceives and treats people born with intellectual limitations. We have built a whole network of individual and corporate contacts and Ruach is well-recognized and appreciated.
So, our first dream is no longer a dream. It is now a reality. The community home is the core of our organization. The home is now well-established, and for more than a year there have been no personnel changes. It has become a stable and, by and large, happy community.
…. but our Foundation is not yet fully financially independent
The Ruach Foundation would want to address the most urgent and dire needs which ‘come our way’, irrespective of whether potential beneficiaries can ‘pay their way’. The Ruach Foundation therefore does not expect the families of Ruach’s seven community members or the participants of the Activities Centre to fully cover the expenses for the services they receive. Families pay in kind or cash whatever they can. The Activities Centre produces some marketable products, but the income of its sales is only a fraction of the running costs of the Centre. Ruach’s outreach work does not generate income either, although through this work Ruach has established a network of supportive friends among whom there are many who provide help in kind or for reduced fees, including e.g. medical help (doctor, dentist), hairdressing, transport, etc.
However, Ruach is far from being fully self-supporting!
Our strategy to become financially independent: providing optical services through a spectacles shop
The Board of the Ruach Foundation have thought for several years about the most realistic way of generating independent income and becoming far less reliant on (inter)national donations which at present are still needed to pay for the cost of social activities of the Ruach Foundation. As time went by, it became increasingly clear that starting an optical business would be the best option given the existing optical expertise in the Ruach Board and its network of well-wishers. There is clearly a market for a popular and cheaper spectacles shop in this part of Nicaragua as according to the Ministry of Health about 68% of the Nicaraguan population has vision problems. Our aim for Ruach Optics is to fill this gap in the market for the benefit of people with lower incomes. By offering appropriate eye care, frames and lenses while generating enough profit to feed back into our social programmes. Our own study revealed that a vast majority of people questioned in the regions around Juigalpa said that they would use Ruach Optics if it were to provide services at an affordable price.
Support us fulfilling our second dream!
Would you like to support our second dream? Then please mark in your agenda: Sept. 14-18! Through GlobalGiving’s ´Little by Little campaign’ you can support ‘Ruach Optics’, and also invite also your friends to give a little. We hope that during that week ‘many littles´ will add up to ‘big change’!
We will let you know by letter, how exactly you can help us. Only together, dreaming and working, we improve the rights of people with intellectual disabilities who are 15 years or older in Juigalpa, Nicaragua!
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.
