All around the world, the ASEA Advancing Life Foundation is helping to break cycles of poverty, abuse, and suffering. We’re doing it through small-scale local service days, large-scale disaster relief, and on-site building projects.
After Advancing Life’s first humanitarian expedition to Mexico, associates and corporate continued to band together. We raised $20,000 in two days for earthquake relief in Ecuador. In the last year, the foundation has facilitated several local ‘Have an Impact, Make a Difference’ days, a concept that took hold after ASEA Founder Tyler Norton introduced it at Convention. Envision Conferences became the hub for these days of service, with attendees in Dallas, Mexico, and Europe raising funds and doing service for local charities. Corporate employees also joined together to benefit their local communities.
“The Advancing Life Foundation is something that we’re very humbled by, that we have the opportunity to reach out to so many people in so many different parts of the world,” said ASEA CEO Charles Funke.
Now Advancing Life is well underway with its next major expedition. We’re heading to rural Ecuador with CHOICE Humanitarian to build a vocational school, the first of its kind in Ecuador. Interest in the project is high enough that two separate groups of self-funded volunteers will head out in July and August of 2017.
The Intag region, where the school will be built, is a remote farming and mining community in the Andes mountains with roughly 17,000 residents. Few get the education they need. As high as 90 percent of college-age youth are not attending school simply because the area doesn’t have educational institutions.
This need matches Advancing Life’s elected focus for its next major project. “We felt strongly about doing something dealing with education this year,” said Advancing Life Chair KimMarie Larsen.
Once completed, the vocational school will provide immediate opportunities for higher learning. Graduates’ skill sets will allow them to benefit their communities while giving them long-term, self-sufficiency—estimates suggest incomes will increase by as much as two or three times.
To date, the Advancing Life Foundation has raised $86,698 of the needed $100,000. ASEA associates across the nation have donated thousands of dollars from team challenge fundraisers, and individual donations continue.
“Every dollar helps create change,” Larsen concluded. “We are extremely grateful for all donations, regardless of size. We invite everyone to be part of this change.”