(Oranjestad)—On May 12th, the 31st edition of the ‘Ronde van Aruba’ marathon will take place. Guus Weltings and Piet van Oosterhout are preparing for their participation in this big event to raise funding for the ‘Trampolin pa Trabou’ Foundation. In a interview with Aruba Today, they talked about their goals and what led them to participate in this marathon.
Guus Weltings works and an account manager at The Lab marketing agency and Piet van Oosterhout is a primary school teacher at De Schakel. Joey van Leeuwen, their driver throughout this event currently works at the Marine Corps in the Savaneta district.
Both Weltings and van Leeuwen’s partners are primary school teachers at De Schakel and this is how they met. The men have also played soccer together for the team S.V. Mercurius Aruba.
They explained that the focus for this initiative was to raise funding for the Trampolin pa Trabou Foundation, a foundation that supports people with disabilities and help give them more opportunities within the labor market on Aruba.
Both Weltings and Oosterhout were already planning on participating in the marathon, with van Leeuwen as their driver, for a while, but they wanted their participating to go to something.
“We found our reason to do the marathon when we started talking about raising funds for a local foundation, Weltings indicated.
They chose Trampolin pa Trabou, because Oosterhout has a sibling with disabilities living in The Netherlands. People with disabilities have a lesser chance in getting a job in the labor market, and in Aruba, that chance is even slimmer. For this reason, they decided to give all their proceeds to the foundation as to help them raise awareness and more resources to keep helping people with disabilities.
According to them, the foundation will be using the money raised to improve their facility. They will be renovating a container unit so that they can keep guiding and training their clients. Besides this, they need tables, chairs, air conditioning and more.
Besides the renovation, there are other facilities that need to be improved. Some of these include the roof of a veranda that is almost completely wasted away, but also the professional kitchen that the foundation uses to cook food.
“The foundation doesn’t get much subsidy for the work they do, so they really need all the help they can get,” Weltings stated.
For more information on how to donate or other matters, visit the Facebook page “Down the Road Aruba” or their website, www.downtheroadaruba.com
