The fundraising “telethon” spectacle familiar to most Costa Ricans as the Teletón closed Saturday night with ¢302 million (about $584,000) for the Critical Care Tower of the National Children’s Hospital, the daily La Nación reported.
From 9 p.m. last Friday to midnight on Saturday, the Palacio de los Deportes sports complex in Heredia, northwest of San José, was a bastion of goodwill and pop music, as supporters celebrated in person or watched on TV. Contributors paid by traditional phone-in method, and through the Internet, Costa Rican banks, Boy and
Girl Scout streetcollectors and concert donations.
The event’s most beloved artists were Proyecto Uno, of the Dominican Republic, Gloria Trevi, of Mexico, and the Spaniard David Bisbal, who arrived just in time to close the Teletón, according to La Nación.
As goes the custom, the trickle of donations grew to a roar in the event’s final hours, breaking the organizers’ goal of ¢300 million.
This was the 12th year the Club Activo 20-30 Internacional de San José pulled off the Teletón, which it has consistently organized to give money to children’s health programs that would otherwise be under funded or nonexistent. The Club Activo is a citizen group of 20- to 39-year-olds who in 1983 got the idea for the high-excitement fundraisers from their sister organization in El Salvador, according to the Teletón’s Web site www.ayudemos.com.
The Club Activo has been putting Teletón’s money toward the CriticalCareTower, a proposed seven-story addition to the Children’s Hospital, since 2002.
