Help Build Rincon Learning Center

Hello everyone,

My goal:
To raise at least $2,766 ($500 of which I have already donated) by June 9 to help fund the materials needed to complete the masonry walls and columns of a community's first learning center in Panama this summer. All of the donated money will go directly towards funding the materials for this trip.

Why $2,766? Because we need exactly 1,456 CMU* blocks with mortar, costing about $1.90/block to complete this project (1.90x1456=2766.40). In June, a team of volunteers (that's me!) will be there to start laying them down.
*CMU block: a concrete block typically used in building construction

Here's an idea of what your contribution can bring:
-$1.00 -- CMU block or one meal for a volunteer!
-$1.90 -- CMU block with mortar
-$3.00 -- lay down and finish a CMU block with mortar or an entire day's worth of meals for a volunteer!
-$5.00 -- 8ft long 2x4 lumber used for concrete wall forms
-$7.00 -- 10ft long 2x4 lumber used for concrete column forms
-$10.00 -- (1) bag of cement or (1) 30ft piece of rebar
-$20.00 -- box of nails or the entire supply of rebar ties
-$25.00 -- box of screws
-$30.00 -- all of the lumber used to frame concrete wall forms
-$60.00 -- all of the lumber used to frame concrete column forms or all of the plywood used for the forms

-$100.00+ -- I will send you a picture of the part of the building we were able to build with your contribution, frame it, and send to you with a personal thank you note.



About the project:
For the past few of months I've been working with an organization called Engineers Without Borders (EWB-DC) and a team of professional engineers on a project designing and building a learning center for a remote region of Panama within the Ngäbe-Buglé comarca called Hato Rincón.
Rincón is home to over 1,600 Ngäbe-Buglé residents who have unique agricultural techniques, a hard work ethic (they contribute almost all of the labor and host the volunteers in their homes with $1 cooked meals the entire duration of the project), and an ambition to become part of the larger world - they reached out to us for help. There is urgency to complete this project because without access to internet, electricity, government services, or healthcare information the population will soon disappear.
Once completed, this learning center will provide the Ngäbe-Buglé residents electricity thanks to the solar cells we will install, to computers with access to internet so they can record their language/culture, use government resources, and the ability to research ways to sustain their community. It will also connect this population to the bigger world and create a center for the Ngäbe-Buglé comarca population to become more than another lost people.


The project is already under way - while all of us were freezing our butts off this winter, the community has dug out and poured the foundations and is making hundreds of masonry blocks for us to lay down this summer! Here are some pictures of their progress:

Digging out trenches for the foundation

Forms for concrete

Learning how to perform a slump test

A successful column!

The progress

And here are some plan drawings to give you a better idea of what the learning center will look like:
3D view of the learning center

What this summer's focus is: walls and floor slab


Thank you for your support!

-Kirill Meyerovich


A little about me:
For those of you who don't know me, I'm a construction project manager with a Sociology degree and I'm passionate enough about this project to create a GoFundMe so I can go fund them. I'm heading there this June to help build it! I'll be mixing sand, stones, and cement to make concrete, building forms to pour the concrete columns and walls, stacking CMU blocms, and will be on my hands and knees trowelling a concrete floor!