Christensen and Romanska’s site visit to Rancho Feliz turns into relief for families

Tod Christensen, the Sedona and Prescott manager for Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty, trekked to Agua Prieta, Mexico, in April to present a $3,455 check to the Phoenix-based Rancho Feliz Charitable Foundation Inc. Sedona advisor and Foundation Council member Magdalena Romanska, who traveled with Christensen, also helped organize a fundraiser for a solar unit after the pair learned that many homes in the area needed solar power. The Russ Lyon Foundation funded the effort within days.

“A thousand great intentions aren’t worth one single action,” said Gil Gillenwater, who founded Rancho Feliz. “I can’t tell you the number of people who say, ‘Well, why don’t we do this?’ Magdalena and Todd went down, saw the need, came back, and funded the purchase. Now a little family can run their refrigerator. They can run a fan, so they can get through the summer. These guys are doers. I love volunteers like them.”

Gillenwater founded Rancho Feliz in 1987 after he and his brother, Troy, took a wrong turn heading to Nogales, and ended up in Agua Prieta around Thanksgiving. Since then, its focus on educational scholarships and service work in Mexico has raised and invested over $16 million to build homes, education centers, childcare centers and orphanages. The charity has distributed tons of medical supplies, funded medical procedures and provided 4.6 million meals through more than 400 tons of food. It has also financed over 2,000 scholarships and created the Mexico Mutts Program that spays and neuters dogs.

“They ran into a young lady that operated an orphanage, and after seeing the poor conditions of the people in terms of finances, but the rich conditions that they had in heart and spirit, they just fell in love with that place, and Gil has made it his mission to create an unbelievable foundation there,” Christensen said. The growth has been his life’s work.

Now, Gillenwater’s brother, Todd Gillenwater, is one of the owners of Russ Lyon Sotheby’s, “so we’ve had a long vested interest in Rancho Feliz, and I had the opportunity to go down and see it for the first time, and I fell in love with that place,” Christensen said.

Gillenwater said Rancho Feliz is based on “reciprocal giving,” the idea that aid should not be given as a pure handout. During its food distributions, which can feed as many as 4,000 people, to receive a bag of food, a participant must first collect at least 20 pieces of discarded plastic off the streets. The same logic applies to its housing: Rather than give a home away, the foundation places a $5,000 “performance loan” on each one, with families paying $100 a month for five years to earn it.

“I was thinking, what can I have a 90-year-old woman do, what can I have a child do to earn their food?” Gillenwater said — the point is everybody wants to contribute. “We don’t want to be beggars. We disempower people when we do that; we humiliate them. Their posture improved. They looked me in the eye, ‘Muchas gracias, señor.’ We cleaned up the city. That’s reciprocal giving, everybody wins.”

“We will be hosting a big fundraiser for Rancho Feliz in January” in Sedona, Christensen said. “We’re still locking in the details, but not only will Gil be there, but a lot of the families, the staff, the people that have been involved in that organization will be there, so it’d be a real opportunity for Sedona to learn firsthand the impact that we can have with our neighbors in Mexico who are not that far away.”

Visit ranchofeliz.com for more information.