A Laguna Beach High School student–the good kind, not the kind you see on that MTV show–is reaching out to Weekly readers. Dinika Bagga is a member of her campus Interact Club (shout out from a member of Pacific High's Interact Club, 1979-82, yo!), and each year the club travels to an orphanage in Casa Hogar Canon Buena Vista, in a colonia known as El Zorillo, a dozen miles south of Ensenada, Mexico. The 50 or so kids at Casa Hogar depend solely on the kindness of others lest they do hungry. Their two-bedroom block house orphanage sits among a neighborhood of tar-paper shacks. One room is for boys, one is for girls and most kids share beds.
Laguna Beach High's Interact Club is joined by other community groups, including the Little Church by the Sea and the Laguna Beach Rotary Club, in bringing the kids money, food, clothing, and arts and crafts. Several improvements are needed at the orphanage, but accomplishing them is slow as the money trickles in. Bagga is asking for others to get involved.
Despite the combined efforts of the various Laguna Beach groups, we are unable to raise the funds to complete all the work required and obtain all the food needed by the children. Our club gathers numerous food for Casa Hogar and fills their pantry upon each visit. However, upon our return, we find their pantry near empty, with usually only rice and beans left for the children to eat. Additionally, Interact Club always gathers extra food and other goods for the surrounding neighborhood, who live in extreme poverty and who lack the basic necessities of life, such as waterproof shelters, clean water, adequate clothing, and food. We greatly need the financial support of many giving people and are requesting that readers find it in their hearts to donate to this great cause.
You can donate via the orphanage's site. More information about Casa Hogar itself can be found here. You can also email Dinika Bagga with words of support.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.