Ember Bridge

12/05/2026

With 2 bridges completed but the river continuing to take lives, we are shifting from family and friends funding to corporate partnerships.

I’d love the opportunity to sit down with you and discuss how we can save lives together!

27/02/2026

Please sponsor now and share with everyone!!!

Plank Owner - $100
Strong Tower - $25k
Anchor - $15k
Foundation - $10k
Steel Cable - $5k
Mile - $1k

On July 14, 2025, we completed the first Ember Bridge in the Ngäbe-Bug… Joseph Charles needs your support for Ember Bridge II: Another Life Cannot Be the Cost

16/02/2026

Get a scale of the problem!

Help us build the second bridge:

https://www.emberfoundations.org/emberbridge

28/01/2026

Check out the progress! It took them 3-months to get this far on the first bridge, they haven’t even been working for 3-weeks so far on the second bridge!

Look at the tower across the river on the top of the photo!!! We are having a hard time keeping up with getting them the materials 🙏

These guys are working relentlessly to save their daughters. So inspiring,

15/01/2026

Today Joe and I had the honor of presenting to an after school club at an elementary school about our bridge project. In the middle of our talk, one student raised their hand and asked a question that stopped us in our tracks.

“So you are changing lives for years?”

Yes. Yes, we are.

And not just because a bridge saves lives by providing safe passage. This work goes so much deeper than that.

In the six months it took to complete our first bridge, we traveled to Panama four times, staying a week each visit to oversee construction, walk alongside the community, and learn together. With our second bridge, we will only travel twice. Once at the beginning to survey and take measurements, and once at the very end, spending a full week in the jungle helping with the final stages of building.

Why? Because the people there are now leading the work themselves.

Another student chimed in: “its like that saying buy a man a fish he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life”

This is not just about building bridges. It is about teaching skills. It is about dignity. It is about income. It is about teaching men how to fish.

We left Panama on Monday. Today is Wednesday. And already we received construction updates that have brought us to tears. The first tier, the foundation of one of the bridge towers, is already complete! The crew is working nonstop!

The game changer…

Instead of us purchasing all the wood for the 83 yards of planks needed for this bridge, the me in the village realized they already have access to the right kind of wood. They can mill and prepare the planks themselves, BY HAND.

That is ownership. That is empowerment. That is generational change.

We are overwhelmed with pride tonight!

And we are also being honest. This bridge still costs money. We are currently eighty thousand dollars in debt and still need at least fifty thousand more to complete this bridge.

But after today, after that child’s question, after seeing what is already happening without us even there, we are reminded why we said yes.

We are not just building a bridge.
We are changing lives for generations to come.

28/10/2025

So much to update.

We are so blessed and grateful to have a trip under our belt to the second bridge site. Did we tell you we’re building a second bridge?! So many blessings to have great supporters that allowed us to go there, get measurements and get started on the very spot where we lost one of our dear friends one week after we completed the first bridge.

The community there was so welcoming! Over 200 villagers showed up and they’ve already started collecting rock and gravel.

Yesterday we received videos from the pastor of the village! They received all of the tools that we bought for them, and they are hard at work!

And then sadly today we received news that we lost two more girls to the river. These bridges are such a massive need to protect life! We are constantly fundraising, we still owe $40,000 on the first bridge and the second bridge is budgeted to cost approximately $150,000. 

We love your support and prayers, please keep them coming.

30/07/2025

Yesterday in Trinchera (1-hour hike upstream of Ember Bridge) 5 students were crossing the river on their way to school when flashflooding took 3, 1 is still missing and 2 are hospitalized. Another can be seen in the video stranded on a rock.

Ember Bridge is 1 of 3 bridges that are needed in this community, we selected the first location because it is the central point in hopes that the community would all use it. The problem is that it adds a couple hours to their daily hike, so they take a chance if the waters look okay. However, the flash flooding happens so fast and is unpredictable.

Please pray for these kids, their families and their community. Please pray for their health and that God provides the two other needed bridges 🙏 (

(Ember Bridge totaled $210k, we still owe $40k. We will continue fundraising and appreciate our family and friends who have joined us. If there are corporate sponsors please put us in touch 🙏)

17/07/2025

Got this video yesterday, the river continues to rise and is currently impassable. God’s timing is perfect 🙏