Fundación Gonzalez Escobar

Families helping families.

When a child needs emotional support and they don’t find it in their community, their community has failed them and when a community fails its children it is failing to believe and strive for a healthier, richer and more just future. Children are every community’s future. They are the hope and promise for a better world. They need us to believe in them and have confidence that our hard work and dedication today make a difference for them and the generations to come. To ignore and neglect our children’s needs today is to accept that we don’t care about our families, our communities and our world, and what becomes of them. After all, our children and grandchildren will live in whatever world we leave for them.

My family and I have chosen to support the children and go a step further. I invite you to continue reading about what Fundación Gonzalez Escobar, a family foundation, is choosing to do and why we need your support too.

Giving back to our community is in my Gonzalez blood and has always been a goal of mine throughout my life. Through my work as a Clinical Counsellor for the last 20 years, I have been working with children and families from vastly different environments in Vancouver. I have experienced firsthand many children and families working hard to improve their situation. Their efforts have inspired and motivated me over the years to continue dedicating my life to the betterment of children’s lives.

As the years go by in beautiful Vancouver, I once again have the desire to do more, and this is how the heartbreak of losing loved ones ignites other ways of making meaning.

When my beloved dad and his sister passed away, I inherited a property, a small farm called Santa Ines in the rural town of Santandercito, a two-hour drive from Bogota, Colombia. Santa Ines belonged to my great-grandmother and has been passed down for four generations and is now under my care. Santa Ines offers an opportunity to once again give back to my community, this time, one that is very close to my heart.

My family and I decided to put this newly received property to good use and build Jorge’s Therapy Farm, a holistic therapy centre that offers counselling at no cost to the underprivileged children in this lovely, yet sadly forgotten community.

Not only will these children receive counselling support as needed, but they will also have the opportunity to help and interact with the various aspects of a farm including its animals and vegetable garden and benefit from the land as well. I want every child that comes to counselling to leave with their belly full and a basketful of fresh organic produce to share with their family.

Unfortunately, Santa Ines has been neglected for many years and nursing it back to health is a large and costly project. In our journey to make this idea a reality, our first project is to build Fredy’s house. It is time to fully bring Fredy into the project and offer him a steady well-paid job and a house to live in with his wife and son. They are committed to helping the children of their community too and we must build them a home so they can live with dignity and see their lives improve as we make progress toward making Jorge’s Therapy Farm a reality.

As the founder of the project, I am also invested in initiatives that will contribute to minimizing our environmental footprint. As a result, we will be working with Conceptos Plasticos to provide us with designs and building materials for Fredy’s house, as well as the therapeutic counselling space and dining area for the children. Conceptos Plasticos transforms plastic waste into Lego-type building materials and in doing so, not only decreases the amount of plastic waste in our land and waters, but also provides a more dignified living to those people who marginally survive by engaging in recycling activities; many of them children and women.

So, friends, colleagues, family and others, we have the land, we have Fredy and his family to anchor our effort, we have the skill, we have the desire and responsibility to make a difference, we have a beautiful community in need of help, we have the children who are full of promise; all we need now is you, all of you, each and every one of you, to help bring this project to life by spreading the word about this project to your contacts and supporting it with any financial contribution you can make. Every bit counts.

Thank you,

Jorge Gonzalez