“Single mother badly needs your help” was the subject line of a recent email we received from concerned neighbors of a single mother living in poverty…
Here is the body:
“Here in Santa Rosa a Single mother that is pregnant, due in October needs help for new born due in October. Her name is Carolina she has 5 kids Levi 14, Francesca 13, Nicole 8, Naomi 7, Isaian 3. She is not working and striving to feed and getting cloth for her family. The neighbors and us trying to help as much as we can. She lives in a metal shack when it rains it pours in the house no floors just dirt. Very primitive life. She borrows money from us to buy, cook and sell corn on cub, with the little money she makes she buys food for family. Carolina is a hard worker, she is supporting her family. Has boyfriend she is separated from him, he works and get paid every week. He gets his pay and spend it all on drinking and don’t give any money to Carolina.”
After further communication we obtained permission to publish Carolina’s story in order to reach out to our followers. Time is of the essence in this case. It is rainy season here in Guanacaste where Carolina lives which means she is and will be spending her last months of pregnancy and first months with a newborn in an extremely unsanitary “home”. Tropical rains will create literal puddles in the bedrooms, if that is what you can call them.
We often are quick to judge single mothers of many kids in poverty. We question their judgement and assume things we would do in their place or not do in this instance. I ask you to put aside your filters and imagine for an instance that you didn’t know what you know. I ask you to imagine only seeing abusive relationships and poverty all around you growing up. I ask you to imagine stepping off your damp mattress in the morning onto the wet mud instead of the clean cozy floors of your home. That is the reality of hundreds of MILLIONS of people around the world. It seems impossible to change the plight of so many. In the case of Carolina, helping one home will mean changing SIX young lives in an instant. It means showing them that there is good in this world and that people care. There is still fairness when everything seems hopeless. It means giving SIX young lives a chance to not be a statistic.
Your donation will go toward a “Safe Home Building Fund” that Dreamlife Alliance established to help children living in EXTREME poverty in unsanitary conditions. We will work with local businesses to obtain donations and wholesale cost labor and materials to at least create a safe dwelling for the newborn and to put down some sort of flooring and reinforce the roof of this “home”. The olders kids will be enrolled in the Dreamlife Alliance Heroes Academy that provides a donation based after school program that will teach them English and martial arts. After the new baby, which is a girl by the way, is old enough for a local day care, Carolina will attend a program to learn basic English and employment skills she hasn’t been able to acquire while raising children in poverty.
While Dreamlife Alliance focuses on helping children, we encourage you to understand that the plight of adults in poverty is no less dramatic and requires no less compassion. Many of them were once children in poverty that never received a helping hand out of the vicious cycle they were born into. Let’s help them break this cycle and become productive, inspiring members of this world.
With tremendous gratitude,
Lola Dranker
Donate through PayPal or Chase QuickPay to Dreamlifealliance@gmail.com
or mail check/money order to
Dreamlife Alliance, Inc.
2560 Stillwell Ave
Unit 1A
Brooklyn, NY 11223
Dreamlife Alliance 