Four droplets rolling with charities

Teletón is an international organisation, acting for rehabilitation and integration in society of people with disabilities, mainly children and young adults in Chile.

Created in 1978, Teletón is now a real institution in Chile. Disability is a very present subject in this country where it affects 14 % of the population. Teletón cares for over 90 % of them through their 14 centres around the country. The Teletón centres gather all the different medical professions the children might need to see, to allow for a real multidisciplinary care. They also organise many art, music and sport classes that are very popular among the children.

Their pioneering actions allowed significant progress to be made for disabled people in Chile, mainly in the field of the re-education of children but also very importantly in changing mentalities.

For Teletón we funded sport equipment, two rowing machines for their sports hall. These machines are of great use for the rehabilitation of children, as they allow a wide range of exercises, are easily adaptable, and make the whole body work out in a symetrical way.

Learn more about Teletón consulting their  site or Facebook page.

The mission of Red de Alimentos is to save food products that are suitable for consumption in order to fight hunger, improve the nutrition of the most vulnerables and avoid food waste.

Despite a dynamic economy, there still exist strong social inequalities in Chile and 14 % of the population still lives under the poverty threshold. Red de Alimentos works directly with food retailers, who give them products that for example have packaging errors or short best-by dates. They then redistribute the products to over 200 partner charities they have in and around Santiago. They deal with over 400 tones of food products monthly.

They constantly need help in their sorting and distribution centres, which is were we helped during our stay there. Between 15 and 20 charities come everyday to pick-up their food products so we helped in the warehouse to prepare their orders.

Water Wheels also funded part of the construction costs of a new freezer and cold room, that they need to be able to receive and distribute fresh and frozen products, to better meet the needs of the organisations they work with.

Learn more about Red de Alimentos on their website.

The mission of the 'Heart of the Forest' organisation is to preserve the primal forest and its inhabitants in the region of Los Yungas in Bolivia. Their objective is to provide alternatives to the culture of coca, which is predominant in the area but is very intensive and weakens the soils. At the moment they mostly focus on developing coffee plants, bee-keeping and planting agroforestery systems.

Water Wheels helped them in everyday tasks such as maintaining crops, managing compost, visiting schools with a vegetable garden set-up by Corazon but cared for by the pupils and selling the honey and coffee produced by Corazon's partners on markets in La Paz. The funds brought were used to buy 20 bee-hives with the associated equipment, 15 coffee beans drying tables and contributed to the costs of a car for the charity to go visit their partners on the field.

To learn more about Corazón Del Bosque, visit their facebook page (in spanish) or the page of the NGO (in french). To have an idea of what their projects look like, visit the page of one of their partners (in english).

Make Mothers Matter (MMM) is an international organisation whose mission is to highlight and support the essential role of mothers for social, economical and cultural development, to hear and make heard their voices. MMM brings together charities in over thirty countries, thus representing over 6 million mothers.

MMM will be our travel companion all along the journey, we will be for them a point of contact in South America. Indeed as women we are also very receptive to the role that mothers can play in society and we aim to meet local mothers throughout the trip. By listenning to their needs and aspirations, we hope to better understand local issues.

One of Water Wheels' objectives will be to meet committed women, actors of change, mainly in the areas of economy, health and education and to put them in touch with MMM.

Have a look at their website for more information.