Foundation Super Article

January 2020.

As bushfires and drought continue to impact Australia, it is estimated that the country has lost nearly one billion native animals. Rustic Pathways has been working in Australia for over 30 years and has always been involved in the support of native wildlife and environmental conservation. We are proud to partner with local organizations that aim to protect and rehabilitate Australian wildlife.

The current priority of the Rustic Pathways Foundation is to provide extra funding and support to our partners at the WRREA to rescue wildlife impacted directly by the fires and drought.

In the wake of these fires, Trish LeeHong and her team at the WRREA are working tirelessly to save and care for injured wildlife.Their greatest need being funds to provide water and food to the rescued koalas, joeys, echidnas, birds, and reptiles.

You can help make a direct impact with a donation to the WRREA here.

A donation of–
$220 USD provides a truck delivery of water
$40 USD provides an individual food pallet
$20 USD provides powdered milk for the joeys

If you have any questions about donations to the WRREA or about our programming in Australia please email australia@rusticpathways.com.

April 2019

Community members of Prek Toal, Cambodia held a ceremony in January to celebrate the groundbreaking of a new primary school after a six-year fundraising effort by the Rustic Pathways Foundation.

Prek Toal is a floating village located in the northwest corner of the Tonlé Sap, the largest freshwater lake in the region, that feeds into the Mekong River. The school, like all floating structures in the village, rises and falls with the river. It had slowly been sinking for years.

After the first few months of construction, the school’s frame is nearly complete. It’s scheduled for completion later this spring.

Rustic Pathways first partnered with the Prek Toal community in 2012. Learn more about the story of the Prek Toal Primary School in the graphic below.

Students can learn more about the Prek Toal community and life in this unique floating village during our Floating Village Service Expedition.

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For more information about our programs in Cambodia and other Rustic Pathways destinations, click below to request a copy of our spring break and summer programs catalog. 

September 2018

Olman Torres stood triumphant with his palm flat against a bright green wall of solid concrete that stands a couple of feet taller than him in Yorkin, Costa Rica.

The wall, one side of a new water tank, stores 20,000 liters of clean and reliable drinking water, enough to support Olman’s community of more than 200 people. The tank and the three-mile aqueduct that supplies it with water was the culmination of nearly four years of work and $30,000, which was raised by the Rustic Pathways Foundation.

Yorkin is a Bribri community, one of eight remaining indigenous peoples in Costa Rica. The village is remote, only accessible by a muddy trek and an hour-long boat right into the rainforest.

The completed Rustic Pathways Foundation aqueduct pipeline in Yorkin, Costa Rica.

Construction of the new storage tank and pipelines was completed in June. From its inception, the fundraising, labor, and ultimately, the successful completion of the project, is the result of a community of people that spans borders.

Identifying a Need

Olman pointed out the old water tank from where he stood next to the new tank. The 10,000-liter barrel was crushed, lying sideways down the hill. He said it would overflow and water the community needed was lost before it got to residents.

The community installed the old aqueduct and storage tank 20 years ago. Olman said at that time, it met the needs of the community. But since then, the community has grown. He said it needed a bigger system that could store enough water to supply the community and one that wouldn’t fail.

Rustic Pathways Program Manager Pamela Quesada works closely with the Yorkin community overseeing Bribri Indigenous Culture and Service. Students have visited Yorkin as part of the program for more than a decade.

Rustic and the community decided to partner on the project in 2015. However, after the initial proposal, Pamela said it was clear that students wouldn’t be able to contribute to the project by participating in community service during the program.

“Students couldn’t do this project,” she said. “There is more technical work and it’s really hard for the students to carry materials here.”

The hike to the aqueduct is steep and muddy. Instead of contributing labor, students would play another integral part in the process by fundraising for its construction.

Student Impact

Many students who visited Costa Rica during programs supported the project by buying MyIntent bracelets. Full-time staff made the bracelets, which were engraved with the Costa Rican philosophy “Pura Vida.” The bracelets were created by the Foundation to support local projects and 100 percent of the proceeds from bracelet sales in Costa Rica went directly to the aqueduct project.

Other students called Impact Ambassadors fundraised for the project with their own initiatives. Students created donation pages on the Foundation’s website and solicited contributions from their networks. One student, Daniel Chan, raised more than $17,000.

“When I realized that water supplies and purification was lacking in certain areas of Costa Rica,” Daniel said, “I was determined to make a change.”

Community Impact

Olman was recruited as the project foreman. Every day, two adults from the community volunteered to either carry heavy materials and tools to the construction site.

In addition to constructing the storage tank, Olman’s crew installed new pipelines that would allow the aqueduct to serve homes located at elevation that got little to no water in the past. Pamela said water pressure throughout Yorkin is now uniform.

“All the people are going to have enough water every single day,” Pamela says. “But actually, they are also going to have quality water, which is super important for them.”

Pamela Quesada meets with members of the Yorkin community about its aqueduct project.

Throughout the construction process, Pamela acted as the key communicator between Yorkin and the Rustic Pathways Foundation. She held meetings with a governing faction of Yorkin called the Yorkin Water Committee, and with representatives from the Foundation. Acting as translator, planner, and supervisor, Pamela was integral in making sure the project was completed successfully.

“I feel super proud about this project,” Pamela says.

Water for Everyone

Olman Torres

After the storage tank and aqueduct were completed this summer, Olman couldn’t wait to show it off. I visited with a small group shortly after it was finished. Olman was proud to describe the different parts of the tank. He asked us to climb to the top to get a look inside, noting that the metal door was heavy enough to prevent children from opening it and potentially falling in.

We could hear the water rushing into the tank from the pipes and both Olman and Pamela beamed talking about how much water was already stored—and excited by the possibility to store more.

“We are happy for Rustic,” Olman said. “We would not have been able to complete this project without them.”

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Click below to become an Impact Ambassador and support Rustic Pathways Foundation projects like the aqueduct in Yorkin. 

June 2017

As Rustic Pathways students embark on another transformative summer, the Rustic Pathways Foundation is pleased to share some exciting news about our funding strategy and—drumroll please—the projects we’ve prioritized with our community partners for 2017.

For those unfamiliar with the Rustic Foundation, we are a 501(c)(3) organization that aims to harness the passion, energy, and generosity of the Rustic Pathways community. Our mission is to support local communities in their effort to implement sustainable solutions to development challenges in many of the countries where Rustic Pathways operates.

Our projects are organized by country, some with multiple projects. In the past, donors and fundraisers could support each project individually. This is an important shift that allows us to improve how we meet the needs of communities we serve. With this new structure, the Rustic Foundation will more effectively leverage the passion of students returning from Rustic programs while also creating the highest level of impact in those local communities.

What does this mean for donors and fundraisers? An even greater impact!

These changes only increase the impact we’re able to achieve. The Rustic Foundation will continue to use 100% of donations received to directly support projects in each country.

This new funding strategy emphasizes our commitment to provide comprehensive support on a range of priorities and to make real and lasting improvements to the quality of life in our partner communities.

2017 Regional Fundraising Campaigns

• Peru (Sacred Valley) Education Fund – Empowering young girls through secondary education

• India Development Fund – Bettering the lives of humans and animals across India

• U.S. (Baltimore) Refugee Fund – Helping young refugees get a fresh start in their new home

• U.S. (New Orleans) Housing Fund – Bringing families home after natural disasters

• Costa Rica Development Fund – Supporting essential human needs within rural communities

• Laos Education Fund – Providing Laotian students with safe living conditions

• Thailand Education Fund – Supporting Thai students to further their education

• Fiji Education Fund – Bringing education closer to home for young Fijian students

• Dominican Republic Housing Fund – Providing safe and dignified housing for families (pictured?)

• Cambodia Education Fund – Making education a reality for young Cambodia students

• Global General Project Fund – Supporting high-priority needs around the world

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If you’d like to support one of the Rustic Foundation’s 2017 Fundraising Initiatives, become a Development Ambassador and start raising money today!

August 2016

The Nasivikoso School in Fiji is now equipped with brand new furniture in the school and teachers’ houses thanks to the more than $10,000 raised by RP Foundation Development Ambassadors in 2015. The school purchased six beds with mattresses, three dining tables with chair, four dresser tables, thirty school desks with chairs, and three teachers’ tables with chairs.

Until 2012, the Nasivikoso village didn’t have a local primary school, which meant students had to spend each week away from their families and sometimes missed school as a result of unsafe travel conditions or illness. Since that time, we have worked closely with the Nasivikoso community, Rustic Pathways, and the Fijian Ministry of Education to get the school up-and-running. It now serves 134 students from grade one through eight.

This summer, after securing approval from the Fijian government, construction began on a new, two-bedroom teachers’ house, which Fiji Program Manager Cassie Wright anticipates will be complete by the end of 2016. A tool shed that will be used to store the supplies and tools currently cluttering the office and library space is also in progress. Cassie says that the biggest issue the school currently faces is water supply, which they hope to address going forward.

August 2016

A lot of progress has been made at Nambark Ethnic School in the last year. The construction of a two-story dormitory, an indoor bathing room, and a new toilet block is complete. Rural students in Northern Laos, especially members of ethnic minorities, often struggle in their pursuit of secondary education. Some high schoolers travel long distances to attend the Nambark Ethnic School, where they live for most of the school year.

The facilities currently serve more than 200 students, many of them female. UNICEF and the World Health Organization report that 1 in 3 people worldwide lack access to a toilet, and ⅓ of schools lack adequate sanitation. Stigmas about menstruation, especially in developing countries, lead many young women and girls to miss school rather than face humiliation because they lack a sanitary and private toilet facility. According to the Rustic Pathways Laos Country Manager, Paradon Simphouvanh, “most of the students come from remote areas and some have never known how to use toilets before, because their lifestyles are so different.”

Paradon and the other staff members at the school are committed to the students’ quality of life and future opportunities. “This donation has really helped them to have a better place to live and to lift up the standards of education,” he says. He hopes that “when the students graduate, they have the opportunity to get their government education fund and help themselves and their families, with a good education that will help them get a good job.”

The elementary school in Prek Toal, Cambodia, is sinking. In a demonstration of its commitment to this project, the Rustic Pathways Foundation has pledged $25,000 from its discretionary fund to support the construction of a brand new, five-classroom, cement schoolhouse, adding to the over $15,000 already raised by our passionate donors and Development Ambassadors. This brings us closer to our goal of $100,000, but we still have a ways to go before construction can begin.

Prek Toal is struggling due to its growing population and increasingly challenging fishing conditions, which threaten the industry that supports more than 90% of the village’s population. Most structures in the 3,600 person village are constructed to float on the surface of the water, rising and falling with the river and seasonal monsoons. The elementary school, built by UNICEF in 1996, is now dilapidated and steadily sinking into the water. Each day, teachers and students are forced to devote time that could be spent in class to pumping water out of the building in order to keep it afloat.

Rustic Pathways and the Rustic Pathways Foundation believe in challenging traditional approaches to education, but we understand that, in many communities around the world, securing basic resources that make education accessible and safe is the first step.

July 2016

We are excited to announce that 75 additional students in Kampong Cham, Cambodia will receive scholarships thanks to over $16,000 raised by our Development Ambassadors in 2015. We are proud to partner with Buddhism for Social Development Action (BSDA) on their initiative, Education for All.

Founded in 2005 by a group of Buddhist monks, BSDA is a nonprofit organization based in Kampong Cham, Cambodia, that has grown substantially and boasts over 5,000 beneficiaries in five provinces. The Education for All initiative aims to provide vulnerable students from all over the country with the resources necessary to keep them in school. Assistance provided by BSDA includes school supplies, remedial educational support, school uniforms, and living stipends for proper nutrition.

This year, the initiative will serve 460 students. That’s 460 students protected from the dangerous reality of lacking a primary education. Poverty sometimes forces parents to make hard decisions about how to allot limited resources; reducing daily expenditures and guaranteeing schooling for students means one less thing to worry about for needy families.

Going forward, the initiative maintains lofty goals. According to Alexis Simchak, Rustic Pathways’ Cambodia Country Director, “one of [BSDA’s] goals is to be able to provide small loans to the parents of the students to make their business more sustainable for income generation. More income means that they can support and keep their children in school.” Unfortunately, she says, “BSDA is still lacking funds to be able to provide these loans.”

With your support, BSDA can continue to grow and serve more students. Less than $350 per year provides a vulnerable, out-of-school child with the support necessary for them to pursue an education. In 2016, our supporters have already raised over $6,000 for this project.

July 2016

The Rustic Pathways Foundation is proud to announce that its 2015 end-of-year campaign was its most successful fundraising campaign in the organization’s history. Nearly 170 staff, alumni, and friends of Rustic Pathways volunteered their time to fundraise for the foundation’s six projects, in addition to its general fund. An astounding 1,050 new donors were generous enough to contribute to the foundation’s projects. Checks from 2015 continue to flow in, pushing the campaign’s six-week total to nearly $120,000.

While most alumni and staff received donations through the foundation’s online fundraising platform, many alumni raised funds through a variety of creative means, like hosting barbecues, writing letters, and even putting on a flag football game.

Madi Nairne, a Rustic Pathways alumna from Dorado Beach, Puerto Rico, was the most successful volunteer fundraiser of 2015, raising upwards of $10,000 for Buddhism for Social Development Action’s Education for All initiative. In addition to online fundraising, Madi hosted a barbecue and pool party in her hometown. BSDA, a Cambodian non profit and longtime partner of Rustic Pathways, will be able to provide scholarships to 28 primary school students with the money that Madi raised.

Rustic Pathways’ director of international photography, Justin Kase Conder, was by far the most successful fundraiser from the Rustic Pathways staff. Justin raised more than $9,000 for the Monte Coca Batey Project, a housing initiative in the Dominican Republic. With only $8,000 of the money that Justin raised, Rustic Pathways Foundation will construct a new home for a family in Monte Coca. The Monte Coca Batey Project was the highest performing project of 2015, with nearly $23,000 raised.

The Rustic Pathways Foundation looks forward to an even more successful 2016, with more projects, more volunteers, and the highest fundraising goals in the organization’s history. Thank you to all of the donors and volunteers who made the 2015 campaign such a great success!