One Local Non-Profit Builds Bridges in the Global
Community
After 10 years of traveling up and down the Rio Beni River in Bolivia to medically treat indigenous communities, The Rio Beni Health Project, created by long-time Valley resident Dr. Lou Netzer, is packing up again to make its annual El Puente trip.
“People do say that he was the last doctor that made house calls in the Valley,” said Director of the Rio Beni Project Christopher Brady, who was a very close friend of Netzer’s and has worked with the project since 1999. “He found his way down to the jungle in Bolivia and started writing and saw the need to help. We had always wanted to work together, so this was an opportune time.”
El Puente, or “the Bridge,” is the educational summer program in which local youth, accompanied by some parents and program coordinator Jim Brady, travel to Bolivia, fundraise and volunteer for the health projects. But most importantly, they also bridge cultures to help close the ever-expanding gap within the global community.
Christopher continues to coordinate the work with Bolivian
staff and has made three to four trips a year to work there over the course of
the past eight years.
“It’s about opening up kids’ minds and letting them know they can make a difference,” Christopher said. “We live in a global society and we need to build bridges amongst people.”
Susan Tova, a Santa Ynez resident who participated in El Puente in 2006 remembers what she found most inspiring about the trip.
“What touched me the most was on [a] night hike [the] guide understood what I felt about the unity of all life; we shared that together,” Tova said. “I would like to go back.”
Though the El Puente Walk For a Reason: From California to Bolivia program started in 2003, the Rio Beni Health Project began in 1997 after Netzer traveled to Bolivia and recognized the demand for health care and services. Though Netzer passed away in 2002 from cancer, his vision of bridging cultures and providing healthcare and educational services to rural communities along the river continues to keep the health project alive.
The project has grown from servicing just a small number of villages to now serving about 45 various communities throughout rural Bolivia. Some of the diseases the program treats include gastro-intestinal diseases, dermatological diseases, malaria and dengue.
“We don’t just pass through and give out meds, we work with the communities over the long term,” Christopher said.
The Rio Beni Health Project is a subsidiary of Concern America, a non-profit organization that trains local populations in various countries including Guatemala, Bolivia and Mozambique, in areas including health, education and agriculture.
“We took the program under our umbrella because Christopher Brady, who we’ve worked with in the past, contacted us. We really value the opportunity to work with rural impoverished communities and give them access to health care,” said Executive Director of Concern America Marianne Loewe.
Networking and training representatives from the local communities in Bolivia in health and prevention is one of the project’s main goals, a goal that has not only proven to be successful, but has also been adopted by the local Bolivian people as well.
“Prevention is a huge part of the program,” Christopher said. “After the rainy season, making sure there’s no standing water around the living area, keeping things clean around the house and working with local health promoters who come from the local communities and spend five years in training with the program to educate their communities is huge.”
As of 2006 the project has also initiated a potable water program, which focuses on building natural water filters so that communities have clean and drinkable water. The filters are made out of sand and other natural material.
“Now they have started a clean water project, which was initiated mid last year, building household, multi-household, and school bio sand water filters. It cuts about 90 percent of the water-borne diseases,” Christopher said.
Because of the project’s successful approach and its ever-increasing demand, the Rio Beni Health Project is in the process of becoming its own non-profit foundation.
“The program has grown so much in Bolivia, the Ministry of Health in Bolivia has said that it’s time that we form our own foundation in Bolivia,” Christopher added.
Christopher attributes the project’s success to its grass roots outreach approach.
“That’s key to this program. We have formed a larger network of local health care,” he said. “We work right in conjunction with the Ministry of Health and local health providers, so when we can’t treat something, we refer right to the local hospital, no questions asked, so it’s a good collaboration.
“Non-profits overseas should never work in isolation. I’ve seen a lot of non-profits that are well funded and they don’t really collaborate with the local staff,” he added.
Now that the Rio Beni Health Project is in the process of becoming a non-profit, the future could mean more assistance to other rural communities along the Beni. What started as one man’s dream has become an entire movement with a mission to help people that even the Bolivian government once deemed unreachable.
With Santa Barbara County residents, mostly youth, scheduled to travel to Bolivia the weekend of July 14, Netzer’s visions continues to come to fruition. They will make the long trek into the rain forest to reach these once isolated communities and in the process, extend the global bridge and redefine the world we live.