Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos™ International

At our homes in Mexico, we care for 776 children. Of these children: 551 live at Casa San Salvador in Miacatlan; 32 live at Ciudad de los Niños in Matamoros; 19 live at Casa Villa Guadalupe, our life transitions program; 139 high schoolers live at Casa Buen Señor; 72 university students live and study in Monterrey; and three more university students attend the prestigious Anahuac University in Mexico City. This year, NPH Mexico had 10 students graduate from university, 32 high school graduates, as well as our children from middle school (66, including external students), primary school (63, including external students), and kindergarten (23, including external students). Following graduations, 32 pequeños who had been doing their year of service moved to Monterrey to start their university education.

We have strong leadership development programs operating under the

direction of the NPH International Family Services initiatives at Casa

San Salvador and Casa Buen Señor. Youths who want to be a part of

these groups received training in leadership ideas and philosophies, as

well as hands-on seminars on leading within the home.

Father Phil Cleary and National Director Rafael Bermudez recently

visited Ciudad Juarez, which is on U.S. (Texas)-Mexico border. Ciudad

Juarez is one of the most violent cities in the world due to the drug

war being waged there. Reports say that there are 10,000 to 14,000

orphaned or abandoned children in that city alone directly due to the

drug war. An offer was made to the government child welfare agency

and a private umbrella group, for NPH Mexico to receive up to 100

children from Ciudad Juarez. Selection is based on suitability for our

community and the first group has arrived with more on the way.

Mexico

The NPH Honduras family is currently comprised of almost 550 people, including eight abuelos, or grandparents, and more than 65 people in nearby communities that we support with food, medicine and other vital needs. We have 473 children who call NPH Honduras their home, including 54 high school students and 44 university students who attend classes and live in NPH student homes in the capital, Tegucigalpa.

Great progress and community growth has already been seen this year. Our involvement in the Comedor Infantil, a children’s soup kitchen in a small nearby town, has grown immensely with the work of our community outreach volunteers. Every week, we provide the organization with fresh milk from the farm, as well as logistical support and other supplies. We look forward to continuing our outreach to the local children, many of whom receive their only daily meal from the soup kitchen.

One of our most important ongoing projects is the developing leadership program, Youth in Action. We are excited for young leaders to take initiative and come up with fresh ideas and goals, such as planning special events. In April, reconstruction of the volunteer house was completed, which secured the safety of the roofing and structure of the building. Our new spice workshop opened at the school where many special education students have the opportunity to learn a useful trade in the workshop, as well as sell their finished spice products to the NPH community.

We have made noticeable progress on our future cheese-making factory, which we hope to have completed by November. Thanks to the busy work of our farmers, children and farm and irrigation equipment, NPH Honduras is able to meet roughly 40 percent of its food needs with its own cows, pigs, chickens and vegetables.

Being one of the oldest homes, we have been busy with challenging renovation needs. The clay walls of the oldest buildings, such as the girls´ house and the babies´ house, suffered serious damage due to the humidity. With the help of a donor, the potable water system was repaired, a new warehouse for tools was built and the volunteer house was repaired. The expansion of the library was completed and in October our special-needs children in Tegucigalpa will be able to use their new hydrotherapy room.

Honduras

The St. Damien Pediatric Hospital, a center of excellence, is a pediatric referral hospital in Tabarre. Some of its high tech, specialized services are found nowhere else in the country. The hospital offers services in outpatient care; a 24-hour emergency room; critical care unit; infectious and non-infectious disease wards; pediatric hematology/oncology; surgery; neonatology; and maternity. Specialty clinics and services are available for chronic conditions such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, sickle cell, and cardiology. A public health center operates outreach programs in the surrounding tent cities and adjacent neighborhoods.

The hospital serves over 70,000 patients a year. Capacity increased by 30,000 since the earthquake due to the collapse of surrounding hospitals, improved diagnostics through medical imaging (cat scan, digital x-ray) and laboratory tests, and increased capacity of primary care facilities to make referrals (from NPFS and St Luke clinics in the slums and the provinces). Digital imaging diagnostics are done over the Internet with hospitals and clinics in the US and Italy. Short-term medical personnel from the Mayo Clinic, Brown University and Akron Children’s Hospital provide training and development with local staff.

The St. Philomena Trauma and Disaster Hospital serves as a first response center in the wake of a natural (hurricane, earthquake, fire), medical (cholera or other outbreak), or man-made disaster. The center has the capacity to absorb hundreds of patients in a short amount of time. During the cholera epidemic, the center has taken in over 10,000 women, men, and children suffering from the illness.

In Kenscoff, there are 379 children and youth. Two youths who

have completed their years of service are going off to Mexico for a

university scholarship program. They will join seven other Haitian

brothers and sisters who have been studying in Monterrey.

The new campus for our secondary school program,

Don Bosco, is already under construction. Six small houses, which

will be home to 16 students, will have two dorms and bathrooms,

a living room area and kitchenette. The first homes will be

completed in August. Construction of the Fr. Wasson Angels of

Light Primary School began in July, and we are hoping to be fully

operational by October when the new school year starts.

The Father Wasson Angels of Light Program (FWAL) continues to develop from a disaster relief program to a sustainable project aimed at helping Haitian families raise their children.

When FWAL began, we served 2,500 children in numerous tent camps around the capital, Port-au-Prince. Eventually the focus turned to eight specific camps/schools while continuing to support the others with food we received from the World Food Program. At the same time, we chose 60 children from those sites and admitted them into a pilot scholarship program, which provided them with school fees and food. These programs continued throughout the 2011 school year which ended in June. Over 700 children from the communities will began school again with FWAL on October 3, 2011.

The St. Louis (130 children) and St. Anne (40 children) Homes are located in Tabarre with NPH staff. These children go to preschool - primary school at the FWAL onsite campus. The main goal is to provide these children with love and an extraordinary education. The children that enter these homes are in

a protective custody of the state until their social welfare status can be determined. Those that are true orphans move to live in our flagship home in Kenscoff, called St. Helene. Children and youths that have family are automatically enrolled in our social services initiative, La Kay se La Kay, (“There’s no place like home”). This program aims to help children who are able to return to their families do so by helping their families with the financial, social and emotional support needed to be independent and raise their own children. This is not an orphanage; it is a new model that strives to help families. It will be difficult, but we are committed to the idea and the theory behind it.

The situation for children with disabilities in Haiti continues to be critical, thus, the work we are doing in the rehab centers of Kay St. Germaine, located in Tabarre, and Kay Elaine are vital. Kay Elaine opened in April, and is a rehab program for children who live in the areas of Port-au-Prince that are closer to Petionville than to Tabarre. This was once the program that operated out of the Fr. Wasson Center, which collapsed in the earthquake.

Haiti

On January 31st, our new primary school was inaugurated. In July, family members of the donor came from Belgium to visit the home and see the school building with their own eyes. The school has 12 classrooms and an annex with a computer lab and library. In the first week of March, the construction of the new clinic building was initiated. It will be completed late September, and we are looking forward to celebrating the inauguration with the German donor couple. In August, a Swiss dental brigade will be able to use the dentist’s office. Construction of our new visitors’ house began in May. The house will provide several individual dorms, as well as a space

for larger groups. Friends of the Orphans Canada provided the funding for this project, and we are looking forward to their next visit in January 2012. After an almost endless bureaucratic procedure, we also started with the re-construction of our students´ house and office Casa Guadalupe in Managua. A total of 16 houses for the children are now completed.

The most urgent need of our home is still the electricity network, as the provisional lines are dangerous and cannot provide electricity to substantial parts of the home, such as the bakery, warehouse, school, clinic and several houses in the boys’ area.

NicaraguaIn Nicaragua, we care for 308 children. Last December, almost all of our

children (except for the youngest who live at Casa Asis and those studying for technical degrees at the university in Managua) moved from Ometepe Island, our first

home, to Casa Padre Wasson, our new home in Jinotepe.

We have 19 students at the university level living in Managua, and two of them are graduating this year. Some of the programs we have in place are vocational orientation, family consciousness, school tutoring and Programa Hermanos Mayores (older brothers and sisters program), in which we help 32 pequeños from primary to university levels with scholarships and courses on personal development. We’re also working with a new population of children who are “street workers.” We provide tutoring and workshops, which are coordinated with the government ministry Mi Familia.

GuatemalaCurrently, NPH Guatemala has 347 pequeños living at Casa San Andres and at our higher education home in Chimaltenango. Our family has grown compared to last year, when we had 311 pequeños in our care. The majority of our pequeños attend Montessori, primary and middle school at our home. We have 56 students enrolled in high school and 37 pequeños completing their year of service. Furthermore, we have seven students studying in several of Guatemala’s universities, and we anticipate that this number will continue to grow in the coming years.

In addition to caring for our growing family,

we have been working on a major construction

project at our San Andres home. After almost

two years of development, the construction

of the Montessori preschool in our home

started in December 2010. The project will be

completed in October this year. The building is

a made up of separated classrooms that will be

used for the preschool program, first and second

grade and several recreational activities. With

the progress that has already been made, we

expect that this project will be completed in October. Within the next three years, it is

our goal to have more than 100 students, ages three to 10, attending classes in our

Montessori school.

This past year, we also restructured our Religion Department and are continuing to make changes so we can provide our pequeños with a more personalized process as they pursue their faith. Finally, in 2010, we started our Big Brother and Sister Program (Hermanos Mayores), which allows us to support the youth who have left our home. Through this program, we are able to give scholarships that provide access to schooling along with micro-finance loans.

El SalvadorIn El Salvador, we care for 375 children, the majority living in the main house and 87 studying high school and university in Santa Ana. We also count 26 babies and toddlers in our family.

Our farm grows corn, rice, cucumbers, chile peppers and radishes, and we also have cows that provide us with some milk each day.

This year, we celebrated our 12th anniversary with all our children and staff. The special day included two family-style meals (breakfast and lunch), as well as mass, magic shows, dances and activities.

In March, five of our female pequeñas received their diplomas from high school. Also to reinforce the religious education program, we organized a spiritual retreat for all of our youngsters,

who during two days of different activities had an experience of a personal encounter with God. A similar retreat was organized with all the staff. Like every year we celebrated the passion and resurrection of Jesus starting on Ash Wednesday preparing ourselves for Easter and to help us remember Jesus’ devotion and humility during Lent. Everyone participated and made their promises for this Lent and Holy Week. Father Ron Hicks returned from the U.S. to guide us through Holy Week and celebrated a joyful Easter mass with all the children.

Our most pressing concern is that the government has stopped many public financial assistance programs, such as potable water, electricity, propane gas development and construction. This action has caused an increase in prices for services and products that help our home and has a direct impact on our expenses and budget.

In the Dominican Republic, we care for 210 children, along with several children from Haiti, including their mothers, who are staying at our home for cancer treatment and other serious medical conditions. This year, we celebrated as 15 of our children graduated from

8th grade. These students, along with our other children, attend our school with 45 external students.

On the education front, we hosted a two-week intensive pottery course and a three-month sign language course, which we hope to develop into full-year workshops. This summer, we had six foreign teachers working in the month-long summer school program.

One of our initiatives is trying to improve our local funding possibilities. Our program to help Haitian/Dominican children with cancer treatment is working

well, and we even sent a child and mother to Spain for heart surgery as part of our outreach help.

We have started construction of the second floor on the volunteers´ house, which will be used for visitors. An additional residential home was donated by long-time supporters of NPH and will also be used for visitors. A metal roof construction for a covered space for special events and sports competitions is on its way from Italy. The construction of a house for special-needs children will start this year.

There are several projects planned for next year, such as an additional house for the smallest children of our home (this project is based on the existing house design with some smaller modifications). NPH Dominican Republic would also like to construct a secondary school (that will be the second floor of the primary school building) and a vocational workshop complex, but funding is still needed for these projects.

Dominican Republic

PeruOur home in Peru cares for 85 children and youths including a set of triplets. Three of our oldest students have finished their year of service and are getting ready to enter college.

We have two programs giving us very good results, the Family Services Leadership Development program and occupational therapy. We have good communication with the child welfare agency but often have to defer cases due to their requests to deliver the children to their relatives.

With the help of Friends of the Orphans Canada, significant progress has been made in our new home Casa Santa Rosa de Lima in Cañete, Peru. Six houses are built, four are 100 percent complete, and two are missing only finer details. Drinking water is guaranteed, thanks to our own well with a cistern and water tower. The first phase of the sewage system is completed and can be expanded according to the growth of our family in Peru. Long negotiations with the electricity company have finally come to an end, and we are now connected to the public electricity network. Wooden prefab constructions will be used as offices for the psychologist and social worker, kitchen and general warehouse. Walkways between the houses and a playground were set-up during the last visit of our Canadian friends and supporters, and a beautiful entrance gate increases security and welcomes visitors and our family.

At our home in Bolivia, we care for 100 children, most of whom are studying in

primary school. However, we do have one year of service youth and one student at

the university.

We have good communication and relationships with the child welfare agency in

Bolivia, and it appears they understand and respect our mission and philosophy of

educating and forming a long-term family.

National Director of NPH Bolivia, José Luis Guzman, and his family finally

moved into their own, small house on the property. After sharing a house for the

last year with a group of children, the new house improves the living situation of

Guzman family and increases the available space for new children. The home has

been working hard on the development of the next projects: some smaller changes

to the house design have been made based on the experiences with the existing

houses, and the design for the new clinic was recently presented. The next two

houses are going to be used for the smallest brothers and sisters of the Bolivia

family with adjustments especially in the bathrooms. Construction of one of the

new babies´ houses started in June.

Presently, we’re living in a political, social and economic uncertainty, which is

reflected in lack of fuel, roadblocks and increased costs of basic food products.

Bolivia

Mission

Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos™ International is a Christian mission that

strives to provide a permanent family and home for orphaned, abandoned and

other at-risk children who live in conditions of extreme poverty. Our programs

provide quality education, healthcare and spiritual formation with the goal of

raising good Christians and productive members of their respective societies.

Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos™ International

NPH Founder, Fr. William Wasson

Bolivia • Dominican Republic • El Salvador • Guatemala • Haiti • Honduras • Mexico • Nicaragua • Peru

www.nph.org • info@nph.org