I have promised myself to visit Gino Frans, at the Eliezer Foundation posada in Paradera. Yesterday was the day.
I stopped at the Chinese market and got three packs of mini carrots, and while feeding the rabbits, the pigs, donkeys and mule, learned about the rehav-detox place, accepting male clients — come as you are — addicts who sometimes get off the street to live on premises and enjoy counseling by a social worker and by Gino, who shares from his past experience and how he turned his life around from being a heroin user to a role model in the addiction field.
Gino calls his foundation Eliezer, god is my helper, because by the grace of god he got clean, and by his grace his vision of a detoxification and rehabilitation farm for alcohol and drug addicts became a reality.
Gino founded Eliezer Foundation when he came back from the Netherlands in 2009. Then he met Fred Wappenaar who offered him the land required for his dream sanctuary.
“You gotta want to change,” Gino explains, “turn your life around, do things differently. If you don’t want it, we can’t help you,” he states.
The posada is a project in the making. A new dorm will be built in the near future, with 20 rooms, in an effort to make it nice and comfortable for residents on the mend.
Residents are required to work, feed the animals, clean their rooms, work the farm, cook and participate in community life.
A small, technologically-advance green house now grows fancy lettuce, as a pilot program by Happy Ponnicks. That company is building a humongous green house in the center of the farm where in collaboration with the Posada, commercial quantities of fancy lettuce will be grown and sold to local hotel and restaurants.
Hopefully, before the end of the year, Happy Ponnicks will provide work for the Posada clients while they live on premises, and when they feel that can return to their families, they can continue to hold on to the job, a real money paying position, in a safe, supportive environment.
This life close to the land and close to the animals helps reintroduce addicts who want to turn their lives around to our society; it brings them back to earth from the drug induced universe they have been occupying. Then the foundation provides the spiritual support and guidance.
We visited the Garden of Prayers, a beautiful natural piece of wilderness with a huge rock formation and I met two of Gino’s older kids, and his wife Monica, the kids are great looking, and Gino reports they are excellent student.
The place exudes hope, and that is what we need when dealing with addiction. Gino is a powerhouse, how he got GOA, Cede Aruba, Royal Dutch Charities, and Happy Ponnicks to collaborate, the man can move mountains.
https://eliezer-fundacion.jimdo.com/
