Help For the Urban Poor in Bogotá Has Local Connection

Have you heard of the Mary J. McCormick Foundation?

I hadn't, but we've been working with Carol McCormick at Columbia Valley Community Health in Wenatchee, and she mentioned this organization, which supports basic need programs providing services to the urban poor in Bogotá, Colombia.

What's her connection? Her own mother founded it.

Here's an excerpt of Mary McCormick's story, straight from the nonprofit organization's website:

In 1968, at 56 years of age, a native Wisconsinite and widow, Mary McCormick, traveled to Bogotá, Colombia to work as a Papal volunteer among the urban poor of that city. She was guided by the principles of the beatitudes. Her mission was to last one year. A one-year commitment became twenty-six dedicated and life-affirming years. Mary's life was touched and changed by her work as she touched and changed the lives of thousands of others.

Through Mary's hard work and the dedication of many volunteers, barrios with no infrastructure have been transformed into communities with water, electricity and paved streets. An association of volunteers was formed and began offering building loans, teaching nutrition, visiting the sick and the incarcerated. In 1972 Mary started hydroponics gardening and a milk program for pregnant or lactating mothers and children up to the age of three. This program, still in existence, began two years before the Women, Infant and Child (WIC) program began in the United States.

We urge everyone who has ties to Colombia or to South America--and everyone who realizes what fortune they have to live in the United States where access to basic services is just assumed--to consider donating their time and other resources to this nonprofit that is doing so much to continually help elevate the Bogotá community.

Learn more about this fantastic organization at the official site.