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Email: GlobalFocusFilms@aol.com
Global Focus Films: HOME
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Global Focus Films
joins forces with
Teddy Bears With Two Eyes in
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CARTAGENA, COLOMBIA
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Global Focus Films' staunch belief that the answers to the world's greatest social ills lie within the very communities afflicted has brought us to the front doorstep of a nongovernmental organization (NGO) called Teddy Bears With Two Eyes. Answers require money, organization and vision, but most importantly it takes love and compassion. It is armed with the latter that Global Focus Films traveled to one of the most impoverished and violent areas in the Western Hemisphere.
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On the outskirts of Cartagena, Colombia in South America rest two small shanty towns struggling for existence. The Loma Fresca barrio is home to several thousand people displaced by a four-decade old civil war. Built on top of a former dump site, homes are strewn together with whatever materials one can find. Luxuries such as running water and electricity are distant memories to those who abandoned their coffee plantations, fled the threats of guerrillas and paramilitaries and witnessed the killings of friends and family. Those with money have left the country leaving remnants of shattered families.
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"Feeding Children
Body & Soul"
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Perhaps the greatest hope for Colombia's future rests in the ability of its forgotten children to overcome the ravages of poverty, violence and crime. With an undaunted commitment to ensuring the survival of these children, Teddy Bears' Executive Director Christine Lorentz and Director Lucy Gibb are building on an effort to protect and nurture orphaned and displaced children aged 1-8 and their mothers. Their objective is not to eradicate all the social and political barriers Colombia faces, nor is it to take on the military or guerrillas; it is merely to ensure that these children have their very basic needs met.
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Global Focus traveled with Teddy Bears in March 2001 to document the final signing of papers giving them the key to a four room house they had been renting for the past year. Within this house the NGO provides three meals a day, medical care and schooling for 75 children. "The house is a place to educate the children and their parents. The parents learn about feeding and raising their children," says Teddy Bears founder Christine Lorentz. "They also assist in the work each day, taking part in bathing the children and making them feel they have a place in this world. (Our) approach to assist the children is focused on solutions that feed young starving children and concentrate on a child's formative years."
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Upon Global Focus' return from Colombia, our editors went to work producing a short video, Feeding Children: Body & Soul. The video is now used to raise funds to feed more displaced and orphaned children who live in these barrios.
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"Instead of charity, charity, charity, we want to break the cycle and have them learn a trade and help themselves," Lorentz says. "Men are leaving to fight and the women and children become refugees. They have nowhere to go and nothing to eat. We want to let them know there's hope. As we're speaking, they're dying of starvation."
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Lucy visits children of
"Teddy Bears" in Cartagena
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Christine on a trip to Colombia
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Teddy Bears With Two Eyes Needs Your Help
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To find out how you can help contact:
Executive Director Christine Lorentz:
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Director Lucy Gibb:TeddyBearsW2Eyes@aol.com or ladgibb@aol.com
Or Write or Call:
Teddy Bears With Two Eyes
5650 Newell Circle North,
Oak Park Heights, MN 55082
(In the U.S.) 651-351-9532
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Feed a Child For
Only $30 US/Month!
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****Teddy Bears With Two Eyes was started in 1999 to "feed children body and soul." It concentrates its efforts in the barrios of Cartegna, Colombia, South America where children are victims of poverrty and crime. The promise of Teddy Bears is to remember the forgotten children, typically the very young in a one parent family. Violence is lived in the war-torn city where rebel troops, drug gangs and Colombian police wage battle. Many of the children are orphans, many others the children of displaced mothers.
***Photos on this page are the property of Teddy Bears With Two Eyes, a not for profit 501(c)(3) Copyright 2001 ALL DONATIONS ARE FULLY TAX DEDUCTIBLE
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Copyright 2001 Global Focus Films
All Rights Reserved
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