Voluntourism Touches Many Lives

Giving back to the community is a major theme in Los Cabos these days. Leading the way in Los Cabos' philanthropy are individuals and organizations like Thomas Walsh and the Los Cabos Children's Foundation (LCCF).

By Rick Stedman

Voluntourism is travel that includes volunteering for a charitable cause. It gives you a chance to give back to the communities you visit while on vacation — for a few days or even longer. The following are some organizations in the Los Cabos area.

For the last five years, the Los Cabos Children's Foundation (LCCF) has taken the lead in advocating for children with medical needs. As Korey Riggs, president and CEO of LCCF, explains, the organization's mission is to provide medical, educational and humanitarian assistance to children, their families and supportive organizations of the Los Cabos area.

Thomas Walsh, LCCF chairman and founder, has been a part-time resident of Los Cabos since 1994. It was Walsh who got the benevolent ball rolling back in 2002 when he heard that several children with leukemia in Los Cabos needed help. After making the arrangements to have three sick children receive treatment in the U.S., Walsh had to deal with bureaucratic requirements that resulted in all three children passing away while waiting for their visas. He vowed that would never happen again and established the Los Cabos Children's Foundation in 2005.

Today, the LCCF's goal is to build a children's cancer treatment facility in Los Cabos. That has been the driving force for Walsh and many others who want to change the fact that Baja California Sur is the only state in Mexico without a cancer treatment center for children.

With a $3 million annual budget, the Foundation seeks to provide world-class medical care to the children of Los Cabos and to build a web of humanitarian support systems. Its list of accomplishments to date is impressive. So far, the LCCF established the Santa Josefina Blood Bank, the only private blood bank in Mexico. It funds and develops Casa San Juan Diego, a community center. It also supports Mobilize Mankind, which provides motorized wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs to disabled children; Amigos de los Niños, a nonprofit helping local children with severe medical needs; and Red Autismo, an organization for families with autistic children.

To help fund these efforts, LCCF holds an annual golf tournament. Partnering with country music stars Amy Grant and Vince Gill, the organization hosts Amy & Vince's Fred Duckett Challenge. The fifth annual event will take place March 5-7, 2011. (Please see related story in the golf section.) According to Riggs, last year's event, featuring Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers, raised a net profit of $850,000 when 152 golfers participated in the Fred Duckett Challenge. The event is named after a southern California real estate developer who had a second home in Los Cabos and shared his kindness with all he encountered.

In spring 2010, on 40 acres of land donated by Grupo Questro, construction began on Amy & Vince's Spirit of Joy Children's Cancer Center. The site is located in Cabo Real along The Corridor. The foundation plans to transform the site into a children's medical campus that will include a wheelchair manufacturing facility, a Ronald McDonald House family residence, a rehabilitation center, medical training facilities and eventually a world-class hospital. "The idea is to create a self-sustaining health care system that is staffed with highly trained Los Cabos residents in order to serve those in need," says Riggs.

Walsh described the evolution of the Los Cabos Children's Foundation. "It's like dropping a stone in a still pond; it creates wave circles that keep growing and spreading." The LCCF continues to grow, touching many lives and hearts along the way.

The Ray Thomas Foundation
The Los Cabos Children's Foundation has made it easier for other volunteer groups as well, like the recent partnering with the Ray Thomas Foundation, called Grupo de Apoyo Ray Thomas (GART) in Mexico and Youth Education Sport (YES) in the U.S. Formed by the benevolent Thomas in La Paz 20 years ago, GART provides youth soccer programs that continue to expand. In the Los Cabos area, there are 500 boys and girls and 64 teams being sponsored.

After 20 years of work in communities throughout Baja, the Ray Thomas Foundation is proud to now include school breakfast programs, community graffiti cleanups and a special needs facility to complement its sports programs. For more information, visit www.raythomasgroup.org.