Panamainfo.com

30% of Panama's Population lives in extreme poverty - Your help can make a difference

You can help the children and families of Panama’s neediest citizens by donating to or volunteering at some of the best run charities anywhere. Panama City’s modern skyline belies the fact that 30% of Panama’s children live in extreme poverty, a majority of them members of Indian tribes living in jungles and mountains.

This poverty has nothing to do with what we call “poverty” in the States or Europe. Poverty in Panama means thousands of babies sick and dying from severe malnutrition many in the hills out-of-sight. It means skinny migrant worker children who begin labor at age 6 and will never have a childhood nor get an education to break the poverty cycle.

There a number of worthy charities. We have chosen two. It is a priviledge to introduce you to their work, their superlative programs and leaders. Love of children and the burning desire to help those most at risk is the driving force in all that they do. You will feel this yourself.

Casa Esperanza - Rescuing the children most at risk

In 1990, a group of Panamanian women decided that Panama would never have the gangs of children that live on the street that plague most countries in Latin America…Casa Esperanza accomplished that and much more. It begins by contacting children selling on the street or working as migrant workers on coffee farms. In a multifaceted approach it gives these at-risk children opportunities to go back to school, get health care, and provides nutritional food and programs to stabilize their family situation. If not for their work the street kids with no education would soon turn to drug dealing or prostitution and the migrant children would repeat the same desperate fate of their parents.

Nutrehogar - Eradicating malnutrition in babies and children

Nutrihogar rescues severely malnourished children and babies restoring their health at special homes. They then educate and support their families in a multifaceted way so the circumstances that created the malnutricion are not repeated. This means everything from teaching Mothers to talk to their children to teaching fathers how to grow needed crops. They have multiple other programs including the daily distribution of high protein cookies and cereals to 6000 children in communities with the highest rates of malnutrition.

Visit their centers

We urge you to personally visit a Casa Esperanza or Nutrihogar center- They are all over the country - Panama City, in Boquete, in Bocas, Aguadulce, Colon etc.

You can help two ways: working as volunteer or making donations. In the Nutrihogar centers you may get permission to regularly and personally care for the malnourished infants and toddlers many of whom are very ill. Casa Esperanza centers needs volunteers to spend time with their older kids-even if you don’t speak Spanish, they will feel you care.

You can also help by making a donation. Ask the center you visit what they most need- it may be a washing machine, an office computer, lunch supplies for a month. Or you can make a one time monetary donation or join a monthly donation plan.

Name accountant firms audit their books, but more important than that -when you personally visit these amazing institutions you will experience for yourself how much they do for Panama’s neediest with a shoe string budget and a lot of love.

Contact info

Casa Esperanza:

Panama City
Tel: 232.7367
www.casaesperanza.org.pa

Nutrehogar:

Panama City: 232.9655
Chiriqui: 775.7746
Bocas del Toro: 758.6506
Cocle: 997.8972
Veraguas: 998.2844
Los Santos-Herrera: 994.0477
www.nutrehogar.com