Two area families donate to Rainbow Network to aid 12 Nicaraguan communities

Two Cape Girardeau businessmen and their families announced Friday their $375,000 donation to go toward helping the poor in Nicaragua.

Midamerica Hotels Corp. owner Jim Drury and his wife, Charlotte, donated $239,000 to the Rainbow Network, a nondenominational Christian organization based in Springfield, Mo., that helps the needy in Nicaragua. The Drurys were joined by Rite Group president Robin Cole and his family, who donated $136,000 to the network.

The donation is half what the network hopes to make in the next three years to be able to sustain help to 12 poverty-stricken rural communities near Ciudad Dario, Nicaragua, according to Mark Struckhoff, U.S. director for the network.

With the donation, the network is able to help more than 48,000 people, which is a 5,500 increase over how many the network had been able to help before.

"You can have all the money in the world in the bank, but if you don't feel good inside, it ain't nothing," Jim Drury said at a news conference Friday announcing the donation.

Cole said he saw this time of his life as a "second childhood" and an opportunity to do good and help others.

"We all face opportunities to do the right thing in our lives. The real challenge is how we respond to them," he said.

Rainbow Network president and co-founder Keith Jaspers said the needs of the people in Nicaragua, the poorest Spanish-speaking country, are incomparable to the needs to the poor in the United States or Missouri. People in Nicaragua often have no churches, hospitals or a government able to help them, according to Jasper.

"If they're sick, if they're hungry, if they're in need, they just sit in that dirt-floor hut and suffer," he said.

The network is also supported by U.S. Rep. JoAnn Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, who recently returned from a visit to Nicaragua.

"We'll do whatever we can," said Kristi Nitsch, the director of Emerson's Cape Girardeau office who represented the congresswoman at the news conference.

Network board member Missouri Supreme Court Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. and his wife also attended the news conference.

kmorrison@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127