The names string together like beads: Limpopo, Lima, La Carpio, Ethiopia, San Pedro Sula, Haiti and Honduras. In each location, people struggling with deep poverty have been helped by a charity here in New York that believes in transformation.
While enduring the snow and cold in Yonkers, retired UFT high school teacher Gerry O’Shea’s thoughts are often on the people who live in these dusty third-world countries. The charity he started with colleagues, HOPe — Helping Other People —provides funding for projects like classrooms and clinics. They’ve also helped fund water resource projects, and a worm project that is enriching soil in Africa.
“We focus entirely on supporting development projects in the developing world,” said O’Shea. HOPe members raise about $120,000 a year, he said, through events such as golf tournaments and restaurant gatherings. For the type of funding requests they get, it is a large pot. It enables them to support projects with $10,000- $12,000 in communities crippled by strife.
“We started to help children who had almost no chance … to get a shot at life,” O’Shea said.
Members of HOPe travel to the countries at their own expenses to meet people and consider project proposals, O’Shea explained. They then report back to HOPe, and a decision is made about whether or not to fund the work. Later on, another visit takes place to be sure work is being carried out and is credible.
The founding members of HOPe hail from careers in public education and unionism: Joe McCarthy, retired teacher, is a former United Federation of Teachers chapter leader; Brenda O’Shea, Gerry’s daughter, president of the Somers Faculty Association;Elba Lopez, a UFT retiree; and O’Shea.
O’Shea said the founding members of HOPe are Irish, and have been influenced by Irish history, the devastation of the famine and the human tragedy that it was.
“The Irish people have been marked by that,” said O’Shea, who grew up in Kerry. “It’s in the recent past. My grandparents never talked about it; they were ashamed. They were told they were to blame.”
With Gaelic gallantry, the group decided it would raise money to help those living in places where the level of poverty is extreme. They look to support projects that have “long-term positive effects. ”
In Ethiopia, for example, a country devastated by AIDS, HOPe helps support projects where women — who have often lost husbands to AIDS and are now raising families alone — are given access to support groups and taught how to become self-sufficient. Working with Community Volunteers of the World, HOPe helps with funding for HIV/AIDS education and prevention, and rescuing children from the streets, where they are provided with life-skills training and education. Teenagers who are orphans from the disease are provided with job training.
In Honduras’ second largest city, San Pedro Sula, poverty and danger lurk. There is a lot of crime, violence and drug use. HOPe supports a medical clinic, which also provides counseling services.
Although schools are free here, students must have books and uniforms — which is too steep a cost for many families, often headed by a lone woman.
“That presents a real challenge,” O’Shea said. “These kids need help. We educators know education is still the best chance kids have.” HOPe helps provide these things so children can go to class.
“Sixty-two children availed of the help and the majority finished the year and most did very well,” reported their Honduras contact at the end of one year.
“Unfortunately, it’s unusual to have an intact family. There’s no system to make the father accountable,” said O’Shea, who is retired from the Jane Addams High School in the Bronx.
Last year, he visited Africa, where HOPe had funded a well so families could have access to water.
“It’s common to see women traveling one or two miles with a jug on their head to bring water back to their families,” he said.
Children who walk to get water face danger from predators.
Near Lima, Peru, nearly 200,000 people live a hardscrabble life in shantytowns built in haste by people escaping violence and economic devastation. It is here where HOPe helps support a center in three-story, red brick house where preschool classes are taught and there is hot water, electricity, a refrigerator and computers. The goal is to support children through nutrition and education. Although the need is wide, the poorest of the poor come first: more than 100 families are served a day. Children struggle with tuberculosis and malnutrition.
In the afternoons, older children can use the center as a safe place to get help with homework and, in the evenings, mothers come for workshops on health and education.
Now, HOPe is providing money for a needed multi-use classroom/community room in this center, where the nun who runs it, Sister Rosa, greeted O’Shea on his last visit with 48 singing children and a handful of musicians.
“She believes music opens up possibilities and helps in development,” said O’Shea.
The group HOPe — founded in 1999 — describes itself as an “energetic, optimistic, positive and enthusiastic organization.”
“We don’t support religious propaganda. We support outreach,” said O’Shea, who also served as a guidance counselor in North Dublin for 10 years.
For more information, visit www.hope-charity.org.
-- Liza Frenette