Committee Celebrates Moving Past Half-Way Point
 Food For The Poor Executive Director Angel Aloma and Event Chairman Ben Scott
(Left to Right) Tom & Nancy Lorden and Event Chairmen Louise & Ben Scott |
COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (March 25, 2010) – The Boca Grande Friendship Village committee has met another major milestone toward their goal for a village in Haiti. The group has raised more than $250,000 for the community that will provide approximately 240 people with a village made up of concrete homes, clean water, animal husbandry projects, fruit trees and more. Food For The Poor has been working diligently to get construction underway for the village.
The land has been secured in Pierre Payen, which is located northwest of Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital. Food For The Poor will soon begin building the first phase of the village. Phase one will consist of about 20 homes.
Ben Scott Sr., committee chairman, says people in the community of Boca Grande remain focused and committed to building the village for their neighbors in Haiti.
“I’ve updated the board outside the post office on Boca Grande to reflect our latest achievements and that has driven lots of people to ask us more questions about our cause,” said Scott. “We continue to raise awareness and money for the village in Haiti. Friends and neighbors are telling their own friends and people whom they are connected to that we are so close! We have almost reached the total amount needed for the entire village. It’s wonderful how many here have opened their hearts to this mission.”
Recently at the Lemon Bay Golf Club, Friendship Village committee member and avid golfer Jack Harms spearheaded a fundraiser in which fellow golfers took the opportunity to “sponsor” holes on the golf course with all proceeds going to the Boca Grande Friendship Village.
The committee has now met about 65 percent of their total goal. Scott and the rest of the committee are hopeful that friends, family and island residents will find it within their hearts to donate for the components of the village which have not been pledged for yet, such as the $45,000 community center, 30 housing units costing $2,600 each, 32 sanitation units and water cisterns costing $1,350 each, and an electrical charging system for the village which costs $4,000.
The Boca Grande Friendship Village will provide more than 200 people with safe housing, clean water, sanitation, agriculture, including 500 avocado, mango and citrus trees, animal husbandry and a community chicken farm, a community center and a solar charging system for electricity. For more information and to donate to the Boca Grande Friendship Village please visit www.foodforthepoor.org/bocagrande, and call (888) 404.4248.
Food For The Poor, the largest international relief and development organization in the United States, does much more than feed millions of hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian agency provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 96 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor. For more information, please visit www.foodforthepoor.org
Contact:
Aimee Vignola
Public Relations
(954) 427.2222, ext. 6079
