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Letter from our Honorary Chairs

Dear JustHope Supporters,

As the Honorary Chairs and Lead Sponsors of Wine for Water: Celebrating a Decade of Hope, we want to share a bit about why we have supported JustHope from the beginning. After working with Leslie for many years in Central America collaborating medical and dental missions, Leslie shared with us her dream to develop a nonprofit organization that would build relationships between North Americans and the people of Chacraseca, a community of impoverished subsistence farmers. She proposed an organization that would facilitate “relationship building” and working side by side with the community of Chacraseca on projects that had the potential to become sustainable and/or improve the quality of life for the community. We loved her vision, so with Jeff’s medical and my social work backgrounds, we were excited to take our participation to a whole new level and joined with Leslie in doing the visioning and start up work for what would become JustHope, Inc.

Leslie, Jeff and I are excited to celebrate 10 fantastic years of building relationships with the people of Nicaragua and specifically the community of Chacraseca. As founding board members and visionaries, Jeff and I are proud to be the honorary chairs as we celebrate 10 years of Leslie’s giving birth to and growing the organization into the unimaginable success that it is today.

Along with our exceptional partners in Nicaragua, North America, and Austria, we brought potable water to a community of families and sponsored hundreds of children in their youth, music and education programs. We brought microbanking to over 200 women, and supported the health and well-being of the community at large with medicine and medical care. The participation and imagination of our partners has exceeded our wildest dreams and we thank you all for your dreams, diligence, and continued support.

Wine for Water, JustHope's annual celebration and most important fundraising event, will be held October 12, 2017. We invite you to join us in moving closer to JustHope's incredible vision and commitment to the organization’s four core values: solidarity, sustainability, mutuality, and collaboration.

Ted Campbell & Jeff Beal
Honorary Chairs, Wine for Water: Celebrating a Decade of Hope

Letter from Leslie

August 24, 2017

Dear Friends,

What a privilege it has been to do this work with you for ten wonderful years! I simply have no words to express my gratitude for your trust in JustHope’s vision, your confidence in our work, and your financial and physical support of the many, many dreams that have been shared with you across the years. I am both proud of the way we have collaborated to make so much possible, and, at the same time, humbled to have been accompanied in that work by so many amazing people.

And now, the time has come for me to “re-tire” – to trade in the racing tires for ones that are on the road a little less and require a lot less maintenance. As of August 31, I’ll be transitioning out of the position of Executive Director into the role of Founder. Rather than HR policies and Board Meetings, I can return to spending more time doing the things I love – sharing the story of JustHope with newbies, and leading a few trips, and helping new donors catch the vision. I’m excited about those new tires!!!

I have a plaque that hangs in my home that says, “If you love something, give it room enough to grow.” As JustHope moves forward, it, too, will be getting some new tires! Jennifer Payton will be moving into the role of Transitional Executive Director, and Marc St. Martin will be moving from Guatemala to JustHope’s Nica office to take the new position of Partnership Director. Kara Luebbering and the other amazing and dedicated staff we have will continue to work with the leaders of our partner communities and YOU to realize dreams and give hope the strong legs of justice!

It’s an exciting time in the life of JustHope. The road ahead is wide open with possibility and potential. We hope you’ll continue to journey with us into creating more partnerships and more hope. I’ll see you along the way!

Leslie Penrose, Founder
JustHope

PS - One great way to show your ongoing support of JH right now is to buy tickets to Wine for Water and bring a friend! And I'll see you there!

Medical Reflection and Events

Read about an intern's experience in Chacraseca. Did you know you can buy JustHope pottery at the First Friday Art Crawl? Wine for Water tickets are on sale soon!

The Intern Experience: Emily W.

Each summer, medical students from all over the United States decide to spend a week using their new medical knowledge to help clinics in rural areas of Chacraseca, Nicaragua. There are many medical teams that partner with JustHope, bringing physicians and medical students from different medical schools and health care supplies to the underserved people of Chacraseca who would otherwise struggle to access medical care.

I am a sophomore undergraduate student studying pre-health and I have been shadowing health professionals in different medical fields. This summer, I was able to participate with several of JustHope's medical teams, working in clinics that were unlike any health care setting I have ever witnessed in the US.

Can you believe it's been 10 years?

I remember the first time I visited Chacraseca in 1998 - the summer before Hurricane Mitch hit. It was a very different community than it is today. The only buildings in the central area were the church and a little storage room where our groups rolled out our sleeping bags at night. And after Hurricane Mitch hit Chacraseca in October of '98, things got even worse - roads were impassable, schools were unusable, crops were destroyed, and hundreds of the 5,000-6,000 residents of Chacraseca were left to construct small lean-to houses, made of plastic tarps...

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