Rosemary and her three children and the Zamy’s and their six children lived in tiny tin homes. Each house, although tidy and sparse inside had a dirt floor, a leaky tin roof, no water or electricity. A raw sewage trench ran beside their houses, when it rained, the floor which doubled as a bed for the children flooded, causing many medical problems. Contaminated drinking water, no jobs, no money for school , no land to grow food or to play on, makes a community fight for the scarce resources. Add political violence and it is impossible for individuals to progress.

The community becomes stagnant and regressive.

The question becomes is it possible for this situation to change?

If you send a child to school but at the end there is no employment have you done anything? If you provide small business loans but no one can read or write it is difficult for them to maintain their business successfully. If you build a house for a family but they don’t have an income will it make a difference to starve to death in a tin house or a concrete house? If you provide medical care but they live in unhealthy conditions where they become  continually reinfected with the same diseases, what have you really done? Can you transform a community by changing the lives of the families?

With this in mind that Partners in Developments programs have been shaped and formed.

Meet Rosemary and the Zamy’s today:

 Partners in Development(PID) sponsored one child from each family  so we knew one person could read and write in each family.
 PID provided each family with a  small business loan to increase their income by $30 US dollars a month.
 Each family earned good credit  with PID and were able to come into our housing program.
 Each family has access to clean drinking water with a community well provided by PID with community collaboration
 Each family has basic medical care through the PID medical program.

Then we watched the transformation begin.

The two families transformed their “houses” into “homes." A fence for their yard was constructed, they collected and invested in furniture for the inside and hung crisp curtains in the windows. Rosemary also blazed the trail for all PID homeowners in Blanchard by creating stunning gardens around their property.  Brilliant flowers are always in bloom, fruit grows on the trees she planted next to their home and vegetables flourish out back. She taught her neighbors how to create and tend gardens on their property, in turn helping to create a beautiful, sustaining neighborhood. Her landscaping work has been so impressive; PID has hired her to care for the grounds of our medical clinic. 

From their stories and the stories of many others in the PID programs, we have seen a total community be transformed. Partners In Development touched not just one aspect of their lives, but many facets that have helped them to become productive, independent families. They no longer spend each day trying to figure out where their next meal will come from. Instead, they go to work, attend school and help their neighbors.  Theirs is a story of hope and success. One that PID is helping create with hundreds of families in both Haiti and Guatemala.