Help us make a road

We're raising some funds to help the people from La Virginia, a small rural settlement located in the central coast of Venezuela, where 15 families live and work. Because of its remote location and small population it doesn’t receive the necessary governmental support. There's not electricity, sanitary facilities or tap water supply.

The only local source of employment is agriculture. Most of the families economically depend on getting their crops out to the nearest town of La Sabana. Also the children must walk there in order to attend school. Only a couple of neighbors have all-terrain vehicles and there’s not a paved road till the main road. During the rainy season it gets all muddy and when the river grows, it overflows the road making things worse. It's even difficult to go on foot and more with a heavy load on the shoulders.

I already saved some money and hired a retro-excavator for a day in order to drag some rocks and sand from the riverbed and use it to fill some of the holes on the road. A neighbor who owns a truck helped me but all that effort will only last for this season. We need a more permanent solution.

I already have a good relation with all my neighbors and they are willing to join efforts and work on their road. I think this project could help us grow as an organized community in order to solve other problems in the near future.

About us

My name is Wilhelm Trujillo, I'm a 32 year-old biologist and permaculture designer from Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. A year ago I acquired a 8 hectares piece of land in La Virginia. The place is based between the Caribbean Sea and the Northern Range having the best of both worlds. It's a very quite space located in an almost virgin valley surrounded by a tropical rainforest and very close to La Sabana river that flows down from the mountains. The previous owner planted a lot of avocados, lemons, oranges, papayas, pineapples, cocoa and mangoes so it's already an edible forest. A crystalline stream of water flows quietly through the property making it the ideal site for a demonstration and educational permaculture design for the local community and the general venezuelan public that desperately needs more of these spaces to avoid ecological destruction of our fragile ecosystems. Our Dream is to create a permaculture-designed family farm that provides most of the food for my family and also allows us to sell the surplus to the visitors and the surrounding community. The site will also serve as a meditation and retirement center for it's a perfect space for getting in touch with nature and our inner self. Small cabins embedded in the forest will accommodate visitors and provided them the peace and isolation stressed people are looking for. The project is called 'La Mano de Buda' (Buhdda's Hand) http://permacultureglobal.org/projects/2404-la-mano-de-buda
Simi Torres is my partner and girlfriend, she's an architect and she's helping me with all the technical details. Also, my brother Christian Trujillo is helping me create a responsible consumers web in Caracas in order to advertise and sell the crops and products we and our neighbors produce.
My best friend, Manaure Peñalver, helped me with the video edition.

How will we use the funds

My intention is to use the funds to hire the machine for at least ten days to properly fill the depressions on the road, create some barriers with the dirt on the river banks and even pave the worst parts of the road with a concrete layer. I think we may even need to put some gabions (wire baskets filled with rocks) on some parts to prevent the destruction of the road when the river grows.
I've estimated some of the costs:

1. 2000$ for ten days of retro-excavator plus driver.
2. 3000$ to buy at least 300 bags of cement, 4 rolls of wire mesh for the concrete road (32 meters long each), 20 gabions minimum, rocks for the gabions and gravel.
   
3. 700$ to hire trucks to move the rocks, sand and materials.
4. 300$ to hire a diesel-engine cement mixer.
   
5. 500$ to buy tools.
   

Thank you very much for your support! The people of La Virginia will be very grateful!

My email is wtrujillop@gmail.com
My cellphone number is +58-412-7305140