Building bridges for a better quality of life.

The benefits goes for:

The local people of San Juan and Santa Maria, who need to reach their plantation in the jungle. They use this muddy jungle path and they cross the dangerous bridges on a daily base to be able to cultivate the fruits and vegetables, to find access to medical care, food, school and to sell they products in the nearest town.

Our family will benefit as well, as the access to our home will became so much safer and easier to us and to everyone who would like to visit us and immerse in the calm, tranquil and healing ambience, what we call simple as the medicine of the jungle.

We will use this donation for:

We would like to rebuild and also expand the numbers of the bridges on the way from San Juan to Santa Maria til.

In order to do this we will need to buy all the materials in town (such as concrete, nails, barrows, tools etc.) bring it on boats to Santa Maria, than hire construction specialist and build the bridges with the locals together.

When should we start to build bridges:

As soon as possible. We are in the rain season and the next dry season is coming so the quality of the road is worse every day and the bridges become weaker and weaker with every massive rain. Wood does not tolerate water well, that is why we planning to construct the bridges from concrete. We would like to build strong, durable, safe, termites and humidity proof bridges, what last long, so even the next generations will benefit from this upgrade.


As foreigners who came to live here, we appreciate a lot how the locals welcomed us here. We live here, this is our home and we feel very fortunate that we are part of this wonderful jungle community. Some locals from San Juan became our friends, even our family. Trough this relationships we slowly learned what kind of challenges their need to face on a daily base. We always try to help and support them as we receive many help and support from them also. Our heart was touched when we learned the circumstances about the bridges, and we felt we need to act and try to find support to make this plan happen. We can’t wait to see the joy and smiles on their faces when we will be able to start to work. We believe that we can reach our goal, even if it means that we just build one bridge at a time, that would make a huge difference here.

We will be very grateful!

We will keep all of you updated with news letters and videos about the development of the project, so you will be able to see how you are helping to create a safer and better life for many awesome people out here. You could follow what are we achieving step by step with the help of your donation on our Vana Lava facebook page. Please let us know if you want to come and visit our little family and see the change yourself.

Thank you!


VanaLava Family 
Denes + Lena with Amaya 
+ the people from San Juan


Facebook / Vana Lava