We launched our first charity auction fundraiser – RAFAuction – from March 21 to April 1, 2022, receiving $7,067 in donations. We received $5,597 in bids for adventure trips and raised $1,470 from direct contributions. Thanks to everyone who supported our three projects for conservation, sport, and peace.
Forty percent of monies received helped fund the first RAFA Pacuare Conservation Festival on April 22-24, 2022, which included an important Conservation Summit Meeting, reforesting the Pacuare river basin, and a day of rafting for the community.
Team RAFA, Costa Rica’s national under-23 men’s rafting team sponsored by the Rivers and Forests Alliance, earned 35% of the funding to help defray their travel costs to Bosnia for the International Rafting Federation (IRF) World Rafting Championship 2022 at the end of May.
Our third cause is assisting the Colombian former guerrilla fighters turned peace rafters – Team Remando por la Paz (Rafting for Peace) – to travel to Costa Rica for an 11-day trip to learn the business of rafting ecotourism. The group arrives on May 4 and will stay through May 15. They received 25% of the funds. A great article about them appeared in Costa Rica’s La Nacion newspaper on May 3.
We are immensely grateful to all of our RAFAuction sponsors for their generosity in donating their amazing adventure trips from Alaska to California, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Colombia. Here’s a complete list of the adventure trips that were auctioned:
- A 3-day rafting trip for two people on California’s Tuolumne River with OARS Whitewater Rafting outfitters;
- A 4-day Alaska River Expedition for two people with McCarthy River Tours & Outfitters;
- A 4-day adventure trip for two people in the Huasteca Potosina region of the Mexican state of San Luis Potosì with Huaxteca tour operator and Ecolodge Selva Teenek;
- A historic Colombia Rafting for Peace Adventure, three days for two people, with the Rafting for Peace team’s tour company Caguan Expeditions;
- A 2-day California river rafting trip for two people with Kern River Outfitters;
- Up to 6 people will spend six nights at a luxury beach house by Dominical Beach in Costa Rica. The Pacuare Outdoor Center manages the vacation house.
- A 6-night stay for two people at the Pacuare Outdoor Center Treehouse on Costa Rica’s southern Caribbean coast;
- The world-famous one-day Pacuare River rafting trip for two people, thanks to Tropical Rivers and Adventures Tours and Excitement Costa Rica;
- Two people will have a 5-day combo trip with Pacuare River rafting, two nights at a rainforest ecolodge along the river, and two nights at Mawamba Lodge by the Tortuguero National Park in Costa Rica.
- A 3-day/2-night Tortuguero adventure for two people with Mawamba Lodge;
- A 3-day/2-night stay for two people at Trogon Lodge in the cloud forest paradise of San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica;
- A Costa Rica 5-day Kokopelli Packraft Adventure for four people with Pacuare Outdoor Center;
- And a Costa Rica Cloud Forest Canopy Tour Adventure for four people at Adventure Park in Heredia, Costa Rica.