Message from
the President
My goodness how time flies! It seems only yesterday that we were confronted with the task of trying to imagine how to continue the Foundation’s work without the strong leadership of our beloved founder, James Ward Mundell. Now after nearly three years have sailed by, we can proudly say that we have managed to continue Jim’s dream of fighting extreme poverty amongst the Mapuche Indians with continued strength and new ideas.
As 1999 draws to a close we are happy to report that our status as a Chilean Foundation should be a reality soon, thus enabling us to have access to certain government funding for adult education. In addition we hope to successfully finalize our efforts to get medium term financing from both The Ford Foundation and Fundación Andes. Our ability to make medium term funds available to our extremely committed staff will greatly enable their efforts to increase the scope of our work as well as reach out to new communities in our region.
Our work over the last two years has continued to be focused fundamentally on the women’s program, which was given an important boost by the building of a new educational center, thanks largely to a generous contribution received from the British Embassy in Chile. One of the advantages of having this center near to the public transport system has been to make our work very much more efficient and we hope to continue our efforts to bring together all our educational and administrative functions. We have made good progress in the commercialization of artisan weaving, thanks to much improved quality control, as well as in the others products produced as part of the program. We have also continued our forestry program, giving much needed work and training to the Mapuche farmers, whose land has become so badly eroded. Another successful innovation is our joint work with students from The Grange School in Santiago during the summer months, which has enabled us to build numerous community centers thanks to donations received from the student’s parents, The Hogar de Cristo and various commercial companies.
When we took on the task of trying to continue Jim’s work, little did we imagine the tremendous amount of work that lay ahead of us. After three years we can only say that this would never have been possible without the dedicated and imaginative leadership that Carmen Gloria Aravena, our team leader, and her assistant Giles Dawson, have given to every project undertaken by the Foundation. The whole team has made the work both successful and rewarding and I would like to take this opportunity to both thank and congratulate them all and invite our sponsors and friends to carry on helping us to achieve great things. We know that without our friends and sponsors we would not be able to continue and I would like to thank them all for their past generosity, trusting that together we can carry on the fight to give our Mapuche friends a better tomorrow.
The Chol-Chol Foundation For Human Development
[email protected]
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