Rio Muchacho Organic Farm-Volunteer Program

As well as the organic farm, Rio Muchacho also runs and supports an environmental school (escuela ambientalista) for the local children of the community. The children range in age from 4-12 The school is entirely funded by the by the farm, contributions from vistors and volunteers, friends, family and donations from other organisations ;it receives no financial aid from the Ecuadorian government or any other official source. Just to keep it running takes over $10,000 each year which may not sound much to you but in Ecuador is a substantial amount of money. In addition to the day to day expenses there are also ad hoc costs that need to be paid. For example, when they need new equipment.

If you are coming to Rio Muchacho as a volunteer, one of the ways in which you can help out is to do some fundraising activities before you come.  It’s best to bring money with you (keep it in your account and draw it out from one of the ATMs in Bahia if you are worried about security) rather than donations of pens, books etc as the school will then be able to use the money in the best way they see fit.  Once you’re in Bahia you can give the moeny to the people in the  Guacamayo Tours office.

Some fundraising ideas:

• Around Easter, hold an Easter Egg raffle - ask people in your school, university or office to donate the Easter Eggs.
• Have a bottle stall or tombola - again ask people if they can donate bottles or jars of something. Stick one set of the of the numbers from a book of raffle tickets on the bottles but only use the numbers ending in 0 or 5. Then fold up all the tickets from the second set of numbers, put them in a box, sell them and whoever draws a ticket with a number ending in 0 or 5 wins.
• After Christmas, your friends may have unwanted presents they could give you. You could use these for a Lucky Dip. Wrap the gifts up, put them in a large tub of sawdust or torn up paper, people then pay money to pull a gift from the tub. You could supplement the gifts with cheap candy bars to make it more of a Lucky Dip.
• Hold a sports tournament that people pay to enter. You could use half the money raised to pay for prizes and then the other half becomes the donation for the school.
• Run a sponsored walk, bike ride or other event.
• Hold an auction - perhaps you and your friends have skills that you could auction. For example, manicures, beauty treatments, carpentry, painting etc.
• Hold a community car wash.
• Cake and cookie stalls are always popular as are book sales.

These are just some ideas to get you started, there are many more things that you could do. And don't forget to make some publicity material for your fundraising event using the photos and information from the Rio Muchacho website.

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