PARTNERS IN DEVELOPMENT

Christ Church Pomfret is a proud supporter of Partners in Development (PID) and the work they are doing to partner with individuals and communities living in extreme poverty in the Carribbean, Latin America, and the United States. 

For many years Christ Church has particpated in numerous service trips to Guatemala, where church members provided essential medical care, and others help with construction projects like building stoves for cooking.

Please visit the Partners in Development website​ to learn more about this amazing organization and the vital work they are doing.

GUATEMALA SERVICE TRIPS

Members of Christ Church have been travelling yearly to the southwest Pacific area of Guatemala since 2015. We work through a non-denomination, faith based organization called Partners in Development(PID),based in Ipswich Mass. PID has been working with the poorest of the poor in Haiti since 1990, in Guatemala since 2013, the Mississippi Delta since 2014 and in Peru since 2018. The development process involves sponsorship of children who receive a monthly stipend for food and schooling, microbusiness loans for people to start a business to feed their families, construction of simple but sound homes and free medical and dental care. PID is a very frugal organization that spends 93% of donated dollars on services to the poor.
Prior to the Covid pandemic, various teams from around the US travelled most months of the year to work on construction and medical and dental care. Each country has a year round field director, social worker to keep track of the sponsored children, nurses, pharmacy and lab services and a native doctor. The volunteer teams supplement the work of PID and when the teams are not there, the work goes on. This past year, donations have kept the medical clinics going in Haiti and Guatemala. We are working on the possibility of taking a team again in 2022. 
​The Christ Church team members have provided outpatient primary care in the PID clinics for all ages by doctors and nurses and installed cooking stoves in homes. Our teams have varied from 11-17 volunteers and include people from outside the church. We may see 500 patients in a week and install 50+ cooking stoves/week. Medical problems encountered vary from minor illness to hypertension and diabetes, are often related to poverty - i.e. anemia from parasites, malnutrition.
​We work in two different villages - Ixtacapa on the coastal cane-growing plains and in Xojola on a mountain slope. Because PID has been assisting with development in one area for 13+ years, we can visibly see that people look healthier than in surrounding villages. The medical team has translators for Spanish to English in Ixtacapa and Quiche to Spanish to English in Xojola. It can take awhile to get the story straight!
​The cooking stoves are purchased by the team members with support by Christ church, are made in Guatemala, reduce wood burning by one third and vent smoke above the tin roofs thus improving the families' lung health for the years to come. The stove teams functions with minimal translation. In the afternoons, the stove team also does craft and play activities with sponsored children of the village which makes for an exhausting but rewarding day.
​After a morning of installing many stoves, the "stovers" also do crafts and play with the sponsored children of the villages in the afternoons.  The older sponsored children are trained in leadership skills and help out with activities. Many volunteers say this is what they remember the most about their time in Guatemala.
​Christ Church sponsors a child in Guatemala (plus a child in Haiti and one in the US). Several of team members have sponsored children in Guatemala that we hope to see yearly. We can see that because of our sponsorships our children look healthier and better fed. For us, our trips to Guatemala are our faith in action.