Rotary Club of Bishop donates to Mexico housing project
The Rotary Club of Bishop President, Maggie Kingsbury presented a check for $1000.00 to Dan Watson at the Mammoth Lakes Noon Rotary meeting March 27th for their Corazon project in Mexico.
Dan Watson has coordinated a hands-on, international service project in Tecate, Mexico for the Mammoth Lakes Noon Rotary for the past two years. Working with Corazon, Inc., a non-profit organization from Orange County, Rotarians and their family and friends, build a family house in just one day. Anneke Bishop, from the Rotary Club of Bishop, her two daughters and 6 other people from Bishop joined this group last year. The project concludes with a simple but moving ceremony where the keys to the new home are presented to the family. This is often accompanied by warm hugs, lumps in the throat and a few tears. One the ceremony concludes, the volunteers travel as a group again and cross the border. Anneke feels that this is a very worthy service project and plans on going again May 3rd.
Corazon is a non-profit organization out of Orange County CA that provides a variety of services to the people of Northern Baja. While they are best known for coordinating the building of houses in one day, they also provide many other services such as scholarships, job training and soccer clinics. They work with US service clubs, churches and schools. The materials for each house cost $7,800 which includes a high school scholarship and it takes 30 to 50 volunteers. The service club raises the money and finds the volunteers. Corazon coordinates obtaining the land and materials and determining who gets a home. They also provide 2 – 3 “lead builders” who are experienced volunteers. They lead the construction project.
