Lend a hand for the cause, however you can
It’s September, one of the two special fundraising months. For about $500 a month I can keep a roof over a place to put out The Panama News, pay the electric and Internet bills and keep myself and the animals fed. That leaves me without bus fare to get to things to photograph and report on, no money to support José Ponce’s work, nothing to keep the computers and cameras up to date, no budget for computer programs for The Panama News, zero for clothing, dental care, new glasses or any emergency that comes up. Donate generously if you can.
I take it, however, that few if any readers of The Panama News have money trees from which they can pick a pint, peck or bushel of bills to send me. Ah, well. But The Panama News also gets by with many other sorts of help from our friends, and the series of hacker attacks that culminated in a long outage of our website also did much damage to our volunteer networks. We are in a rebuilding phase both with the website design and with our networking. We need reporters, photographers, columnists, translators, feature writers and people sending us all sorts of news tips to do a better job of covering Panama. The Wappin Radio Show should not be the only music feature in our culture section — we need other people with different tastes to liven up the mix. Our corrections crew needs to be livened up. There are editing and website and graphics design tasks that need to be done. We are increasingly bilingual and the Spanish side especially needs development. If you want to volunteer your time and labor, send us an email.
If you want to donate money by Western Union, MoneyGram or check
The recent change of PayPal addresses is creating a temporary but real cash flow issue, so other ways of assisting The Panama News would be especially helpful at this time. Anything sent by wire via Western Union or MoneyGram must go to “Eric Lea Jackson Malo,” which is the name on the editor’s cedula. The companies won’t transfer the money if it is made out any other way. We do, of course, need to know the name of the sender and the routing number, so do send us an email at fund4thepanamanews@gmail.com with this information when you do send money this way. The Panama News, being unincorporated, does not have a bank account or a mailbox in its name. If you want to donate by check send us an email so that it can be arranged.
We also exist on donations of materials
Most of our photos were taken with donated cameras, these words were written on donated computer and our work often enough involves phone calls on donated cell phone minutes or working into the wee hours while slugging down donated coffee. The Panama News may be a ragtag micro-enterprise, but it has lasted all these years because it’s a community effort. For in-kind donations of materials, contact us at thepanamanews@gmail.com to make arrangements.
