Water of Life
Thursday, December 14, 2006
By: Alex Patico

Reflections on Foundation for Peace work in the Dominican Republic

Children in the Domincan Republic wait for water in their community.

In a poor barrio of the town of San Pedro Macoris, on the southeastern coast of the Dominican Republic, a man roars up to the “drive-in” window on his motorbike with his wife on the rear seat.  Between them they can manage to carry three of the five-gallon plastic jugs of water that they will buy  at a below-market price.  Good water, water that won't make them sick.

The window, the equipment that treated the water, the church to which it is attached, and the school, whose second-story will be built in the coming months all are supported by the community with help from a small, US-based foundation.  The Foundation for Peace (FFP) has been working side-by-side with the Dominican poor for over 17 years now.  Last year, FFP managed to bring down more than 500 North American volunteers, to dig latrine pits, put one cinder block on top of another, inoculate people against infectious disease and teach the young.  Having engaged communities in a number of DR towns and cities, FFP's work now extends over the border to serve some of the poorest Haitian villagers.

I was invited to go to the Dominican Republic to see what the group is doing there, and to use my experience in the international field to develop new resources to support the work they are planning.  Over a four-day period, I traveled over 700 kilometers with a mixed group of U.S. and Dominican staff and volunteers.  I saw water projects in operation, dispensing water and with it health and a chance at a better life.  We saw a school in a suburb of Santo Domingo where FFP built a basketball court and bleachers for a tiny school.  I was taken to a Sunday service at a church in a Haitian village; the students’ chairs were brought across the border from a nearby Dominican town by the students themselves, strapped to their backs, walking barefoot down a dusty unpaved road.  FFP will be obtaining some books for the children and helping repair the palm-thatched roof which is full of holes and falling in on the parishioners.  We visited a site where FFP is going to build a clinic for infectious diseases such as malaria and leprosy, and learned what will be needed to make that clinic work.

In a way, that short trip was the culmination of a journey I began when I was chosen to be a Community Ambassador under the auspices of the Experiment in 1963.  After my 4-week homestay in Sweden as a high-school student, came a junior year of college in Vienna, a stint in the Peace Corps (Iran, 1968-69), and thirty years of work in the field of international exchange and development.  Along the way I served as an EIL campus rep, community rep, and World Learning placement officer for a USAID project, earned a Master’s degree in cross-cultural training, and attended the U.N. earth summits in Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg.  Even if your own international experience did not lead you to make a career of it, groups like FFP offer meaningful opportunities for hands-on work abroad work that really makes a difference.  Despite the existence of countless development programs organized by national and local government, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Agency and others, many of the world’s poor still fall completely through the cracks in the system.  Like Mohammad Unus, who last week received the Nobel Peace Prize for his good idea of offering “micro-credit”, the founder of FFP saw a need and resolved to fill it, without creating a bureaucracy or relying on congressional appropriations.

Alexander Patico is an international exchange and development professional. He had his first international experience as an Experimenter (Sweden, ' 63), has served as an EIL campus rep, community rep and volunteer trainer, and worked for World Learning on a USAID project in the early '80's. He was also a Peace Corps Volunteer, an NGO delegate to the earth summits in Rio and Johannesburg, and a founding board member of the National Iranian American Council.

Foundation for Peace (FFP) is a non-profit organization “dedicated to working hand-in-hand with people in need to enable their emergence from poverty.”  FFP operates on the belief that access to basic needs such as education, health care, clean water, and economic opportunity provides for a successful formula to decrease conflice and diminish injustice.  The foundation has a long history of working within the Dominican Republic and now has expanded its work to Haiti.

What is unique about this organization’s work is that it uses a collaborative model in providing their services.  The organization, its divisions, and its workers all work “mano a mano” (hand-in-hand) with the Dominicans.  Although the organization’s current group stemmed from a ministry started more than 40 years ago, its work currently encompasses partnerships with both faith-based and non-faith-based organizations, and its volunteers and work groups comes from a diverse group of backgrounds, ages, and faiths.

FFP emphasizes and promotes the building of personal relationships with the local community.  The belief is that these relationships create better understanding among different people hence leading to peace and social justice.  As part of their work, any schools, clinics, or churches are built due to the community’s request and are run by Dominicans in order to promote sustainability and local opportunities. 

The organization offers a wide array of projects.  To learn more about FFP’s work or to find out ways in which you can get involved, check out the How People Can Get Involved section in their website.