Compassion began to minister in the Dominican Republic around the year 1970. At present, we are working with a total of 168 implementing church partners and an equal number of child development centers.

Out of these development centers, Betel Student Center in the municipality of Consuelo in the eastern province of San Pedro de Macoris is one of the most recently opened centers with 69 sponsored children.

Recently, only 25 children at this center were sponsored. But the staff were amazed to see God’s provision of new sponsors for their children who live in the community of Barrio George.

Barrio George took its name from from Hurricane Georges, which hit the Island of Hispaniola in 1998 and left many dead and thousands of people homeless.

Many of the development center children and their families were among the homeless after this hurricane. A number of unfinished apartments, which were midway through construction, were provided to temporarily shelter these families. 

Poverty still affects the families, especially the children. This is why the Biblical Christian Church in Consuelo asked us to partner with them to start a child development center in this locality.

Now, whenever the people in Barrio George see the development center secretary, Raida, or the director, Patricia, in the streets they ask if their children have been sponsored yet.

At church, people ask for prayer that their children will be sponsored. Whenever a child receives a sponsor, they give thanks to the Lord for His provision.

Consuelo’s economy used to be based on the cultivation of sugar cane, but the industry deteriorated and closed in the 1990s, leaving many people unemployed. The community in which Raida and Patricia live has very few work sources; most men working locally are motorcycle-taxi drivers or vegetable-market vendors, while women wash and iron other people’s clothes for pay.

Other people work at the free-zone industries in San Pedro or move to the tourist city of Bavaro for jobs. These people must leave their children with a grandmother or an aunt. Formal jobs are rare for school teachers, city hall workers or government ministry workers.

In the community of Barrio George, children learn to read and write around the age of 8, which is why many sponsored children don’t normally write introductory letters themselves.

The Letter-writing Process

The letter-writing process starts in the country office, where a Sponsor and Donor Service associate receives the request for new-assignment letters through the Correspondence Tracking Application computer system. Through this system the field office learns that a new sponsor has been found for a child in the Dominican Republic.

Each Sponsor and Donor Service associate works with an average of 43 child development centers. The associate prints a list of requests for new-assignment letters for each child development center. Every Thursday, these and other documents are sent by courier to the centers. In the capital city, centers usually send a staff member to pick up their documents personally.

At the child development center, the secretary opens the documents and sorts the content. The request for new-assignment letters lets the secretary know which children have been newly sponsored. These children are called from their classrooms and given the good news – and encouraged to write an introductory letter to their new sponsor.

Typically, the secretary interviews the child to begin the letter-writing process. Some of the secretary’s common interview questions are about facts she already knows, such as the child’s family, with whom they live, if they are enjoying good health, their school grade, what they like to do, what they like to play, if they pray, if they want to ask a question of their sponsors, if they want their sponsors to pray for something specific, and so on.

From the child’s answers, the secretary drafts a letter in a notebook that is saved in the child’s office file.

When a child doesn’t yet know how to write, the secretary copies the letter from the child’s notebook onto the letter stationery, which is ultimately sent to the sponsor. Usually, the child signs the letter either with his or her name or a written mark, or by marking the letter with a fingerprint.

Often, the child will include a drawing, which is attached to the introductory letter.

If the child is able to write, he or she transcribes the letter content from the notebook onto the letter stationery.

In the case of an older child with more writing experience (usually about the age of 12), the child writes the original letter in his or her notebook and the secretary checks for corrections. Then the child writes the actual letter on the stationery that is to be sent to the sponsor.

After children have written to their sponsors, the letters are sent to the country office and received at the Documentation Reception and Distribution Center, where each piece of information is verified and registered. Then the children’s letters are forwarded to the corresponding Sponsor and Donor Service associates, who scan the bar code on each letter to verify that they have been received from the field.

The next step is translation. Sponsor and Donor Services pass the letter to the Translation associate, who calls the translators so they can pick up letters for translation.

Every translator is given seven days to complete a package of letters. Usually translators receive a new package of letters as they return the one they’ve just translated.

Letters then go back to their corresponding Sponsor and Donor Service associates, who prepare the letters for mailing to their destination countries. From the beginning to the end, the time needed to have child introductory letters written and shipped averages 15 days.

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The Dominican Republic has a population of about 9.6 million people. Of that, 73 percent are of mixed race, 16 percent are Caucasian, and 11 percent are of African descent. Around 95 percent are Catholic. There is freedom of faith in the country, which allows around 2 percent of the population to practice Voodoo.

A typical Dominican family has four people. Statistically, while 42 percent of the homes are run by both parents together, about 31 percent are run by single mothers, and the rest are run by relatives.

The Dominican Republic is divided into 31 provinces. Eight are in the southeastern region of the country: Distrito Nacional, El Seibo, Hato Mayor, La Altagracia, La Romana, Monte Plata, San Pedro de Macoris and Santo Domingo.

Each province depends on the central government. Each, however, also has its own local authorities: governor, senators, deputies, mayor, etc.

Families living in extreme poverty in the southeastern region of the Dominican Republic work hard to get two meals a day. The situation gets more difficult when drought limits cultivation of small crops like sweet potatoes, corn and plantains, which are the main ingredients in common meals.

In these communities, there are no steady jobs and the residents need to either travel out of the community to find a steady job or stay around their neighborhood looking for small jobs, for which they might get paid around $8 for a full day of work.

The saddest part in this scenario occurs when the children reach adolescence and find they need to help with family income. In the urban areas, children work at traffic lights selling a large variety of items, cleaning windshields, or begging by each car window.

Many times children also get involved in very risky money-generating activities like scavenging in the dump, drug trafficking, and child prostitution. Many times children will abandon school at this point.

Regarding child labor, there’s been some improvement in light of the sugarcane industry’s announcement that it won’t hire anyone under the age of 18. Nevertheless, children can be seen helping their parents plant and collect sugarcane in the southeast. A cutter is paid between $4.50 and $5.50 for every ton of sugarcane cut and loaded on the wagons.

In Batey Las Pajas in San Pedro de Macoris, families usually try to raise goats or cows. Animals are a source of income in times of great need, like when a family member gets too sick and needs medicine. But cattle rustlers sometimes steal the animals, leaving only bloody fur in the fields. These thefts drastically affect the economy of families in extreme poverty.

Primary and high school education is generally available in the southeast. Schools in some communities teach primary school only, and students often have to travel to a neighboring town to attend high school. University is a dream that just a few see come true, which is why our church partners provide technical vocational training courses to the children at their development centers. The churches want to equip the children with the skills to generate income for themselves and their families.

The weather is a sensitive issue in the region because of the passage of hurricanes. Every year, tropical storms and hurricanes affect the southeastern region causing landslides and flooding. Thousands of families are left homeless almost every year, and some people die.

Earthquakes have not been a concern in recent years; however, after the earthquake in Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, all the residents near the southeastern coast were warned to leave their homes and go to more distant higher grond because of a tsunami warning for the Caribbean zone. Even though there was not a tsunami, the fear that one could occur at any time remains in people’s minds.

Examples of child development centers located in areas like this include:

DR-120, 126, 130, 160, 161, 163, 203, 243-245, 249, 256, 290, 292, 302, 304, 308, 309, 315, 320, 340, 347, 349, 366, 368, 369, 371, 375, 384, 385, 389, 401, 401, 407, 408, 411, 412, 420, 431-437, 450-454, 456-458, 461-465, 468, 480, , 482-484, 491, 521-523, 525, 527, 528, 530-533, 535, 536, 540, 550, 630-635, 701, 705-707, 710, 720, 810, 900, 901 and 915.

Batey Aleman, which is part of DR-002, is in the San Pedro de Macoris province and is part of the Dominican southeast.

View of a neighborhood near DR-245

Donplines Recipe

A typical dish in the southeast is donplines, or dumplings, boiled balls of dough.

Ingredients: wheat flour, water and salt. (Because wheat flour makes very soft dough, some people use corn flour instead, for stiffer dough.)

Put water in a deep pan and place over the stove flame until water starts to boil. Simultaneously, put some water in a small bowl and add a little salt to taste and mix.

Put wheat flour in a bowl, pour some of the salt-seasoned water in it and start to mix and knead until you get soft dough.

Take little pieces of dough and shape them all into half-inch-thick and 3-inch-long chunks and submerge them into the boiling water in the pan.

Boil the dough chunks for around 20 minutes or until they are well cooked.

When the donplines are cooked, turn off the stove and serve them hot, either with codfish in red sauce, fried sausage, fried eggs, herring or any other food.

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With a network of nearly 100 doctors of chiropractic throughout Canada and the United States, committed to donating U.S. $20.00 for every new patient that comes into their clinic, Chiropractors With Compassion have been able to raise around $1.2 million dollars since their founding in 2004.

By partnering with Compassion Canada, they have funded a number of major projects around the world and Batey Angelina is one of these.

A batey is a rural community of sugar cane cutters and their families, mostly Haitians, living in extreme poverty. The history of sugar cane cutting is quite long; however, Batey Angelina, located in the eastern province of San Pedro de Macoris, was the first mechanized-mill batey settled in Dominican Republic, in the early 1920s.

“Before Compassion arrived to the batey, there was idolatry, voodoo, prostitution of young girls, lack of income in the homes, few jobs,” says Pastor Mercedes of the Prophecy Church of God in Batey Angelina. “Our church had 77 members, and only 13 of us had jobs.”

Pastor Mercedes remembers how he entered humid, dirt-floor homes where the families ate only one meal a day at 4 in the afternoon. “That only meal represented their breakfast, lunch and dinner all in one.”

The wooden house with tin-sheet roof where the Compassion-assisted children gathered every week after the Batey Angelina child development center opened in 2006 was a great concern to the local church leaders. They prayed and fasted constantly, even for 40 consecutive days three times in the year, trusting that God would provide for a better infrastructure.

And God heard their prayers when in 2007, Batey Angelina was chosen as the next funding project of Chiropractors With Compassion.

In only the first 12 months of the project, this major donation allowed the construction of a new concrete building with suitable classrooms for the Compassion-assisted children.

The support from Chiropractors With Compassion also provided for a modern, professionally equipped vocational center to train the youth and adults in industrial sewing, computers, hair dressing, cooking and other working skills that will enable them to generate income to help themselves and their families.

“I’m impressed with this structure,” Dr. Edward Quirk of Chiropractors with Compassion says. “It’s beyond what we even thought. It’s actually one of the most beautiful buildings that we’ve been in during our visits.”

Dr. Quirk is a Canadian doctor of chiropractic who founded the Christian ministry Chiropractors With Compassion together with his clinic partner, Dr. Yurij Chewpa, and their respective wives, Dr. Holly Quirk and Dr. Marie Geschwandtner.

The Batey Angelina project also includes an industrially equipped water purifying plant, which at present provides for the demands of the community with around 1,000 gallons a day.

Before, the residents in Angelina drank the same water they used for house chores. As reported by Pastor Mercedes: “That water had a great number of bacteria and caused a lot of skin irritation and fungus and kidney problems.”

Driven by a motto he came up with a few years ago — “In order to change the world around a child you first must transform the world within the child” – Dr. Quirk has seen the transformation that is taking place in Angelina. He testifies to how much the work of the local church has transformed the community.

“This year, I was able to walk around this community without any problem, without any security. I was able to go into another community just with my children and my wife, my mom and my sister. It just felt like the community has changed; and I believe it is because of the work the church is doing. And I believe it’s also because the kids are starting to believe that things will change.”

The inauguration ceremony for this project was held on the Oct. 15, 2009. All of the Compassion-assisted children and their families attended the event, and as expected, all of the local church members, government authorities, representatives of the local sugar cane company, staff from other child development centers, and representatives from the Compassion country office were also in attendance.

Wilson Guzman, Partnership Facilitator Supervisor, spoke on behalf of Compassion’s Country Director Kleber Lora:

“My wife was here yesterday; she studied in one of the best universities in Dominican Republic. When she saw the vocational classrooms she was so amazed that she said ‘even the best universities don’t have the classrooms and equipment found in this place’.”

Knowing that he was going to speak on behalf of the Chiropractors With Compassion, Dr. Edward Quirk prayed: “Lord, what would you like me to say?” and he felt God said, “Nothing! I don’t want you to say anything; but I want you to do something.”

He received God’s instructions that he and his family should anoint the feet of Pastor Bienvenido Mercedes and those of Pastor Francisco Honkins, founder of the Prophecy Church of God in Angelina.

Dr. Quirk took bottles of water and passed them to his children, Britton and Rhode, and to his Compassion-sponsored children, Joselito and Michael. After taking off the pastors’ shoes and socks, they began to pour the water and rub their feet.

“I felt contrite, first because I don’t feel worthy of having children washing my feet. I understand that it’s me who needs to wash the children’s feet.”

It was a very touching experience for the entire community to see Pastor Mercedes not being able to hold back his tears.

“I wanted to fly away and disappear. What I felt was so big that I wanted to cry more, but I wanted to be alone to do so.”

The inauguration ceremony concluded with a parade departing from the new building and going all around the batey. Hundreds of people holding palm leaves in their hands followed the truck that carried a band of musicians and singers, and the multitude accompanied with joyful singing.

The climax of the event happened when everybody in Batey Angelina gathered right in front of the ruins of the sugar cane mill. The songs of worship and the happiness and encouragement in the people seemed to suggest they felt free from the bondage of nearly 100 years of hard work in the sugar cane fields.

So great has been the impact of the work of the local church that people who had lost all hope now are starting to invest in Angelina.

“The people are dreaming so much that we already have a church brother who has a stationer’s shop, and he has a fried chicken shop too,” Pastor Mercedes states. “There’s another brother who is going to open a new grocery store, and there’s another who’s going to open an ice cream shop. They have believed in God. They have said: ‘If God has done that in Angelina, I can trust in Him and He’s going to bless me.”

In the past, no matter how much the local church worked, they felt as though they didn’t see the fruit. They were saddened each time they saw their loyal, committed and consecrated church members leave the community to look for better living conditions for their families. But that has changed, and Pastor Mercedes rejoices to start to see the fruit.

“Our church youth leader is moving into Angelina, and other people who had moved out, they are returning to Angelina too. Angelina has been changed spiritually, physically, emotionally and morally.”

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The church’s leadership calls for periodic members’ meetings where all ministry managers update the assembly on their ministry. Since all the ministries overlap in some way, these reports help the church make the best decisions.

The ministries include Compassion’s Child Sponsorship Program, the Healing Waters International water project, a school and a community holistic vocational center.

These church meetings have become a forum at which the community, represented by the believers, can discuss the best ways to manage resources.

Milqueya is a mother of eight and grandma of seven. She and her husband still live with 11 children and grandchildren at home. Milqueya and her large family enjoy the benefits of the decisions she’s been helping her church make as a voting member. One important decision was the incorporation of the Healing Waters International water project.

In the past, even the least harmful water source wasn’t safe enough for Milqueya. She bought water from the trucks that drove past her home.

Miqueya paid only RD$20 for a 5-gallon water bottle, avoiding the RD$35 price at local stores. But the truck-bought water was making her and her family sick.

“The water caused us stomach diseases. But after we began to drink the water from the church, we are always healthy and we don’t have any stomach problems.”

After the Healing Waters International project began, the community’s health has improved.

“Since we’ve been running the project, there’s not been any health problems reported,” says Ana Ivelisse, manager of the Healing Waters International project. “The National Ministry of Health comes and tests our water to certify it.”

Not only is the water from the church the purest, it is also the most economic.

For RD$10, half of what she paid for the truck-bought water that made her family sick, Milqueya can take her 5-gallon water bottle home, saving her family’s limited resources for other living expenses.

Proceeds from the water project go toward human and social development to serve and benefit the community through education, health and nutrition.

In the field of education, the Healing Waters International project provides 20 children from Barrio Mexico with a scholarship so they can study at the church’s school.

The project also pays for a watchman who protects the property and equipment of the Compassion-assisted child development center, and a housekeeper who cleans the center’s building.

The proceeds also support the church’s vocational school, which trains locals in a variety of jobs, including computers.

Motorcycles, carts and trolleys arrive each day, taking home 41,000 to 45,000 gallons of purified water each month. The church donates another 600 gallons to the community.

The highest water consumption in the year comes during the summer months when the temperature reaches around 34 degrees Celsius, and the children are home for school break.

The 600 gallons of water that the church donates to the community benefits many groups, including the Compassion-assisted children at Cedina Student Center, the students in the church’s school, the medical staff and patients at a local clinic, and some neighbors in times of special need.

When the community holds a sports event, the church is always willing to support it. Pastor Ventura Taylor says,

“We serve the water in small bottles and we donate it to them as a way of our church being committed with that activity, which has to do with the social and cultural development of the community.”

A label is put on the bottles specifying that it is purified water from Comunidad Cristiana El Santuario Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal Church and Healing Waters International.

A recent major effort included donating purified water to the residents in Barrio Mexico during three days to commemorate the World Water Day and the Healing Waters International anniversary.

For the occasion, the local church had given special tickets to the customers, and on the first day of the celebration they picked tickets from a surprise box. The winning clients were given Healing Waters International promotional items like ball pens, key rings, caps, T-shirts and water bottles.

The water supply in the pipes in Barrio Mexico can be scarce at times.

“Many times the people don’t get water for even five days in a row,” sayss Ana Ivelisse. “We also give the people raw water so they can mop and clean their homes.

This concept of service derives from the way the church sees the people. Pastor Ventura Taylor and the church have a holistic concept of stewardship.

“The people using the purified water are not just in need. They are human beings with dignity, human beings in freedom, and human beings created in the image of God and after His likeness, whom we must value and respect.

“To us, the way we treat the people as users is the start of our own stewardship.”

For this reason, the church has chosen the most suitable staff from the congregation for the water jobs, people who can be the face of the project, upright and committed to their faith.

Pastor Ventura Taylor continues,

“They need to be people who can transmit the name of the Lord Jesus Christ through their living. And they will transmit it by thinking of the God of excellence and quality, who is the God whom we serve.”

As the church opens every morning, the staff has a short devotion with a reading from the Bible and a time of prayer, and invites any neighbor who has come for water to join in for a couple of minutes. Many people have come to know Jesus because of this courteous Christian attention.

As a community of faith, this church understands that the resources it has should be managed for the sake of the kingdom of God, and that it should be done with transparency.

Pastor Ventura Taylor testifies,

“Being accountable for the things we do has never been a bother to us. Instead, it is a satisfaction. We like to do our inventories, we like to do our audits, and we even like to have our yearly budget of how we are going to do things.”

Read about the Compassion and Healing Waters International partnership on the Healing Waters blog, Waterworks.

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