In April 2009, the “See with Your Heart” wall was built, again benefiting the Manuela Gandarillas Center for children without sight of the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia.

This improvement to the Manuela Gandarillas Center was carried out along with Television Channel 21, Latinos on the Move Cochabamba, and a half a dozen businesses during our now yearly campaign called “See With Your Heart”. During the campaign the population answered the call and provided the necessary donations for the implementation of this project.

“We ask the Fund to erect a protective wall so that no more thieves would enter our establishment,” said Nicomedes Flores, Director of the Manuela Gandarillas Center, “We had a problem with thieves taking advantage of the condition of the orphans in the Center and robbing personal belongings, the Center’s water pump, and other valuables.” The Inter-American Fund Development Fund did a little more, and apart from raising a taller and more secure wall, it also made repairs and improvements to the playground and gardens.

In May 2009, the city of Cochabamba inaugurated the first beach soccer arena in Bolivia, benefitting some 700 kids from peripheries of the city.

This was a project developed together with the Club Aurora Foundation, an entity that runs a soccer clinic in the zone for kids 5 to 17 years old.  Multiple social organizations, local and national businesses, and voluntary groups also joined the initiative, totaling over 40 entities that contributed, in one way or another, their “grain of sand,” as the fundraising campaign was named.