Rainbow Network adds to Nicaragua services

Jim and Charlotte Drury, of Cape Girardeau, have initiated a challenge gift and will provide a dollar-for-dollar match gift incentive, totaling $375,000, for the next three years.

Rainbow Network co-founder and President Keith Jaspers will detail the gift, as well as a second gift from Cape Girardeau’s Robin Cole, at a news conference Friday.

The contributions will fund the organization’s expansion to serve an additional 5,500 people in 12 rural communities in Matagalpa, one of the poorest regions of Nicaragua. Community committees are now being formed for those new services.

About one-fourth of children aged 12 and younger suffer from extreme malnutrition in Matagalpa, according to a Rainbow Network news release. Families there live on an average income of less than $2 per day.

Rainbow Network also is focusing on its new network of ministries in Ciudad Dario. Some communities there are so remote that staff members can only access them by horseback. The organization is actively seeking gifts to fund its Ciudad Dario efforts.

Rainbow Network is in its 11th year of delivering self-help programs in housing, education, health care and economic development to about 47,500 of Nicaragua’s poorest people. Rainbow Network has a 71-member full-time staff in Nicaragua, including 12 medical doctors.

The organization has more than 2,000 active partners in the Ozarks.