Newsletter – Special Edition 2022
Virtual Annual Benefit 2022
With fall well under way, it's time to prepare for our Annual Benefit! This year, we are planning a virtual event due to COVID-19 still not being entirely in the past and also to allow our supporters from all over to participate.
We will have updates from our Field Staff in all of our locations. We’ll be taking a look at how the pandemic has impacted Haiti, Guatemala, Peru and the Mississippi Delta, as well as what PID has done through your support to help children and families during this time; and what the future looks like with your continued support.
During our Virtual Annual Benefit, we will also be going further into detail of all the new things implemented in each area, a more in-depth look at what has helped these communities to thrive during these difficult times. Please save the dates and keep an eye out on our website and social media – November 28th to December 2nd! We’ll be releasing a new video each day!
– Tali Marcelin, PID President
CHRISTMAS GIFTS FOR SPONSORED CHILDREN
PID is not able to deliver physical cards, letters, or gifts to sponsored children at this time. Instead, you may send a modest monetary gift to our Ipswich Office and our Field Staff will deliver it to your child. In lieu of a card, you can write a brief letter that we will translate, scan and send digitally.
Give your gift online here, then choose Christmas/ Birthday Gifts, or mail a check to PID, PO Box 901, Ipswich, MA 01938. Make your check payable to PID and be sure to write GIFT and your child's name or number on the memo line. $5 of each Christmas gift given will be used to provide parties for all the children in our programs.
To ensure delivery before Christmas, please send your gift by December 1st!
REPORT FROM THE FIELD – MISSISSIPPI
We have exciting news that we have been granted funding to purchase a beautiful piece of land in Glendora, MS. This will enable us to work towards building our own facility which will allow us to grow our programs and provide a better place for activities and community building.
REPORT FROM THE FIELD – HAITI
Sonia is a woman from Canaan, Haiti, who suffers from bilateral esotropia, as do her nine children. This condition has made it very difficult for Sonia to find a job and support her family. A generous donor was made aware of Sonia's situation and sent assistance to her and her family so that they were able to start a business selling cosmetics. Sonia was able to work with Genois and Pouchon, our Haitian Social Worker and Field Director, to come up with a solid business plan.
Her new small business is thriving and she is able to go to the nearby market every day to sell her products. The small business consistently provides enough income to purchase food for her nine children!
Violence, protests, and rapidly increasing gas prices are just some of the factors that have contributed to growing hardship for the Haitian people. PID continues to be one of the ONLY healthcare facilities still running in this area. Our staff are working tirelessly to ensure that all patients are seen. Our Physician has slept on site just to make sure she would be able to see patients the following day.
Our Child Sponsorship team is working endlessly to continue to check on each child in the program along with their families each month. We continue to see a rise in emergency children that come into the clinic suffering from severe malnutrition due to the family's lack of income and food. Our Safety Net Fund continues to support these emergency cases. Our staff are an amazing group of unsung heroes. As prices increase, so has the cost of medicine and medical supplies. Please consider supporting the Haiti Medical Clinic or Safety Net Fund.
REPORT FROM THE FIELD – GUATEMALA
In March, we had an optometrist and medical team visit our Guatemala clinic. This team was able to carry down 650 lbs of medication which will help stock our clinic's pharmacy. The team worked with Visualiza, a Guatemala City based eye care center, and performed eye exams and screened patients for glaucoma, cataracts, and other vision related problems. Thank you so much to this team—your work has helped improve so many people's lives!
PID received a $15,000 donation for Guatemala eye care from Anthony Triglione and his siblings, Arthur Triglione, Susan Lindberg, and Janice Weiner. They gave this donation in loving memory of their parents.
Back to School in Peru!
We are excited to share that after two years of being fully remote, Child Sponsorship students in Peru are back to school in person! They are very happy to be back after being so isolated due to COVID.
Community Kitchens
The past couple years of COVID has made life even more difficult for many families that were already struggling economically in Peru. These families are now facing new challenges just to be able to eat and to feed their children. The poverty levels have increased, leaving the less fortunate people with more problems to solve.
One way that these families living in extreme poverty found to relieve hunger and to be able to feed their children was to create "Ollas Comunes," which are community kitchens. The people in the community find an open, common area where they can gather together to cook and collaborate by putting together cooking utensils, pots and pans, and as much money as they can pool together to cook a meal for all the neighbors.
Neli, PID's Field Director in Peru, has been working with different communities on ways that we can help. Upcoming teams will begin helping to build community kitchens, and others can donate funds to help purchase utensils. To learn more about upcoming trips please visit our website.
Social Justice – by James Hull
Integrating study with struggle represents a long tradition in the history of social justice work. Activists, on the ground, work to change systemic structures of historical oppression; and scholars, within the community of the oppressed, work closely with those activists to theorize patterns of oppression and resistance that emerge from such struggles.
One classical pattern of oppression presents as "gaslighting." Drawn from an old Hitchcockean film, the term denotes a strategy to relieve an heiress of her fortune by causing her, through tactics, such as brightening and dimming gaslights, to doubt her own sanity. Such creating of unstable conditions; blaming them on the victim; and, then, assuming the role of protector, stabilizer, and conservator, has historically characterized dynamics of international and domestic elites collaborating to exploit labor and resources from working class and indigenous communities from the regions in which PID operates.
When social justice movements from these communities of the oppressed challenge such systems of inequity and oppression, the oppressive elite (who control the media) switch the national dialogue. The narrative pivots from correcting historical injustices against a marginalized group to gaslit fabrications of how these groups have actually created their own misery and now threaten the progress and social cohesion of the entire society.
Accordingly, indigenous communities in the Highlands of Guatemala and Peru struggle with systemic oppression on two levels. First, they resist transnational corporations in league with domestic elites who would convert all indigenous communal holdings and land-based spirituality into commodified entities worthless beyond their cash value. Yet, simultaneously, social justice movements from these regions must challenge elite accusations attributing indigenous poverty to regressive culture and selfish hoarding of national resources. "Turning off the gas" in this case entails activist-scholars patiently educating their publics both to the history of international exploitation and state sponsored violence toward indigenous communities and to the historical contributions of indigenous communities to the national economy and social imagination.
Likewise, social justice movements in Haiti push back against international narratives underscoring Haitian corruption, ignorance, and violence as drivers of Haiti's ongoing poverty and political instability. Haitian activist-scholars do not dispute the diagnosis. Yet they bristle at the gaslit source of the disease which fails to identify the primary corruption and violence historically imposed on the Hitian masses by the self-serving policies of foreign governments and their transnational corporations in league with Haiti's domestic elite. The ignorance these scholar- activists most lament is that of the good citizens of such countries who would challenge their foreign policies if only aware of the historical and ongoing role they play in perpetuating oppressive systems abroad and specifically in Haiti.
No less in the US, my social justice contacts from the Mississippi Delta have shared with me how frustrated they have grown with the shift in national dialogue from that of correcting historically systemic injustices against the African American community to that of highlighting a few non- representative behaviors by overzealous protesters and then characterizing the entire movement as lawless, violent, or, at best, divisive to the national polity.
Of course, gaslighting represents just one historical pattern of oppression, requiring a specific form of resistance. If you would like to learn more about such patterns and encourage a US foreign and corporate policy in solidarity with social justice workers in the regions in which PID operates, contact me (james hull) at james@pidonline.org. You will be contributing to a long tradition of social justice movements that can advance only by integrating study with struggle.
Donations in Honor of a Special Person
Joan Robbins in honor of Mark Robbins' birthday Selby Frame in honor of Sarah Tully
Leeanne Moses in honor of her mother Susan Moses
Maura Mastrogiovanni in honor of Sue Moses
Maryellen Brisbois in honor of Paula Walsh's retirement from UMass Dartmouth
Alison Jolda in honor of Nancy Noonan
Linda Barnes in honor of Lizzy Koah for her birthday
Katie Pelland in honor of Jameson Pelland
Martha Winant in honor of Sarah Tully for her birthday
Donald & Nicole Kerr in honor of Robin Kerr
Lauren Migliaccion in honor of Linda Monroe's birthday
James & Karen Ansara in honor of Jack & Lise Manderson
Betsy & David Abramson in honor of Cathy Davis
Gina Looby gave to the Housing program in honor of Mae Fogarty Cappuccilli
Donations in Loving Memory
Agnes Short & Jan Pretty in memory of Palmira "Polly" Fischer, mother of Martha Murray
Gina Looby in memory of Odelle Spinney
Elizabeth Koah in memory and honor of Gale Hull
One year ago this month, Gale Hull, co-founder and President of Partners In Development, passed away unexpectedly. We lovingly remember her as she was, a woman full of love and kindness. We remember the decades of her life she spent being a voice for the unheard, fighting to bring justice and hope to people living in extreme poverty, to people who are oppressed and to people struggling with social injustices. She fought for what was right and just until her final day, here on Earth.
Donate to support the life-changing work of Partners In Development, Inc.
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Give online or via mail to PID, PO Box 901, Ipswich, MA 01923