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Writer's pictureJUAN D COLLADO

MY TRIP TO LOMITA DE PIEDRAS


Since I was a child I always had the desire to travel, to have contact with different cultures, gastronomies, to know new places and natural beauties, to interact with new people, with their customs and idiosyncrasies. But analyzing in my adolescence for the future that I could expect and have in my country, due to the economic situations and moved by the need for improvement I went to the United States to obtain a better quality of life for my parents, and thus form my own family.




At the age of 19 I joined the United States Navy, moved more than once to serve this great country, I did it for my dream of getting to know the world. Last year 2021 I started a new travel project, with the social and humanitarian perspective that is one of the flags and fundamental principle to be able to make my trips in different parts of the world; because I not only wanted to film natural landscapes, and different cultures as hundreds of YouTube channels already do; but also to know the needs and social struggles because there are great public and economic deficiencies that exist especially in our Latin America. That is why I undertook the first of my trips to Lomita de Piedras as a place to visit, in the Dominican Republic, my native country, to make for all of you a series of documentaries about humble families, with scarce resources, different needs and social struggles in remote places; especially to make visible the quality of life of children who are the future of our society, and thus to achieve positive changes with the help of public and private institutions, social foundations and you my followers giving the contribution you can, in the way that is within your reach and no matter how humble it is.


We all know that one person is not capable of making a difference, but all of us together, fraternized in a single purpose, can definitely make great changes in each of the populations and families we visit.


Lomita de Piedras, is a beautiful rural locality of Rincon de Piedras, the beautiful land where I was born, I have shared in the past multiple times with the beautiful people of this community with whom I have a connection that has occupied a special place for them in my heart, people of a moral and ethical quality, noble, simple, hardworking, with a culture of love, solidarity without prejudice and complexes.



El Negrito

I wanted to talk with the adults of this beautiful community to recall that common past that formed us as the integral citizens that we are, the anecdotes, customs, recreational activities that we did as children and thus share them with our new generations, but of course the many needs that afflict each of their families, I also wanted to honor our predecessors people who struggled to raise their families in the midst of so many adversities and limitations as Mr. Onorio Tavares, the popular Negrito, an exemplary man, born worker and hard worker, who no having a family of his own adopted other orphaned children of families in conditions of extreme poverty, to provide them with a different future, despite their difficult situation,




and I also wanted to honor my uncle Francisco Ramón Collado,

Francisco Ramón Collado and his wife

who in life was a very inspiring person, exemplary in the community and whose name bears the school of Rincon de Piedras in honor of his legacy.


I have seen how at a very early age the children of our most remote communities have to work to help their parents, in other cases the older children must take care of their younger siblings so that their parents can go to work, but even though they are happy in their world and with these responsibilities not according to their age, it is important to emphasize that they are still children, Unfortunately, it is also evident the lack of school education, product of economic needs, the governmental neglect in family education, in the area of sexual education as early teenage pregnancies are manifested, a situation that unfortunately occurs in the most remote populations of Latin America and for many years. Also on this trip I wanted to show you the support that has been undertaken by social foundations such as "Rincon de Piedras Unidos Foundation" that is undertaking hard work to develop the conditions for the construction of aqueducts to bring drinking water to these communities despite the limitations, little support and very limited resources. Especially because with this great help, the future of the children of Lomita de Piedras can be better, children who have dreams of being professionals in different areas, and with a human quality and sensitivity of heart at a very young age think, want the best for their parents and grandparents. That is why together with Juan de Dios en la Tierra as a channel and with the foundation we wanted to allocate all the funds that we are receiving specifically for Lomita de Piedras and we will receive with the help of all of you 80% for social and infrastructure works, which are being done for Lomita de Piedras, the other 20% will be for the logistics area of the Foundation to streamline institutionally all these projects, as they are multiple in different areas as has been evidenced, in the spiritual with the construction of churches, in the social area for the help of operations, medical treatment of members of the community, changes and remodeling of the physical structure of buildings and family homes that are in very bad condition, in the area of education, and in the insufficient area of health etc...


I wanted to show briefly the tremendous situation that is happening with the latent threat of ecocide that is taking place in the Dominican highlands with the construction of three dams in the protected buffer zone, deeper into the mountains of the Armando Bermudez National Park, but this information will be presented later in a future article, but you can already document it in the previous videos of the channel.

Also the relentless forestation that is suffering the environment of our communities with the cutting of wood, and the urgent need to reforest our rivers, our streams, our streams, because with the construction of this complex of dams in the Cordillera Central will greatly diminish the flow of rivers and the flow of drinking water for the populations involved, which are a great threat to tourism and economic businesses that depend on it.


This trip needs a third installment with which we will be exposing and making visible all the needs of the population of Lomita de Piedras in depth and their families, so it is necessary from now on that together we undertake with our individual and mutual effort, the means, programs, resources to help with social and humanitarian conscience to the beautiful people of this beautiful community, but above all my biggest engine to push in this channel a better future for the children of this population.



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