international project proposal

INTERNATIONAL PROJECT PROPOSALPROJECT 3018

CrossCatholic.org/AshesToLife

From Ashes to LifeA Lenten campaign to give shelter, quench thirst

and empower Christ’s poor— Dominican Republic —

“…I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

John 10:10

A Lenten Commitment to Bless and Change Lives!

This Lent, we invite you to honor Christ’s suffering in a powerful way — by directing your fasting, prayers and almsgiving to bless and empower a Dominican bishop’s efforts to alleviate poverty in his diocese.

Bishop Jose Grullon Estrella has made himself a living sacrifice to bless the poor, even earning the nickname “the backpack bishop” for the many times he has visited remote villages and slept on the dirt floors of poor families’ shanty homes. To honor his dedication and to glorify Christ during Lent, we are challenging U.S. Catholics to use their Lenten obligations of sacrifice and prayer to support Bishop Estrella in his incredible missions of mercy.

Read on to learn how you can help this heroic bishop fight two major problems facing the Dominican poor — the lack of clean water and the need for safe shelter.

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From Ashes to Life | Project 3018

Executive Summary

DescriptionPoor Dominicans struggle to find clean water, often resorting to digging holes in dry creek beds and drinking bacteria-infested water that makes them sick. The most destitute live in makeshift houses, some with dirt floors and rotting walls that flood during storms and easily disintegrate.

This project will fund the construction of six water systems and 24 sturdy new houses, impacting about 3,000 people in need. The six water systems will serve 15 communities, and the housing beneficiaries span 10 communities.

PurposeTo quench thirst, prevent illness and lift the poor out of the ashes of poverty in a way that unifies communities and demonstrates Christ’s sacrificial love.

Our PartnerFUNDASEP — the social outreach of the Catholic Diocese of San Juan de la Maguana — was founded by Bishop Jose Grullon Estrella with a vision of working hand-in-hand with the poor and mobilizing them to rise out of poverty. Unity and the value of hard work are promoted as participants commit to contributing manual labor, raising a maintenance fund, and praying together for the project. Rather than merely give handouts, FUNDASEP works alongside the communities, teaching them to form work brigades, hold meetings, and take long-term ownership of these water systems.

FUNDASEP coordinates with local parish priests, who conduct blessings, celebrate special Masses, lead prayers and help ensure that the greatest needs are being met.

LocationThe project will span the provinces of Azua, San Juan and Elias Pina in the Diocese of San Juan de la Maguana, Dominican Republic.

Campaign Goal$550,000 will cover the cost to build:

• Six custom-designed water systems that will use a combination of solar energy, electrical power and gravity to pipe clean, abundant water to about 800 households.

• Twenty-four prefabricated houses composed of metal frames reinforced with concrete slabs that will give families safe shelter from storms.

How You Can HelpYour generous gift will help Bishop Estrella’s diocesan charity, FUNDASEP, impact the lives of about 3,000 people in need.

Christ emptied himself and became a servant to reach the lost. Let’s remember his holy sacrifice by serving his poorest children. Save them from thirst and misery!

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…I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh

I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:19-20

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Table of Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

SECTION I THE NEED

Never Enough Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Virtual Homelessness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

The Needs Next Door . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

SECTION II THE SOLUTION

The Backpack Bishop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

The Bishop’s Charity: FUNDASEP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

The Project: Clean Water. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

The Project: Safe Shelter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Target Area: Three Provinces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

What Will You Sacrifice? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

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My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?

Psalm 42:2

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“There were no schools, no chapels. No kids knew how to read. It broke my heart.”~ Bishop Jose Grullon Estrella, recalling his first travels to his diocese’s poor, rural fringes ~

SECTION I

THE NEED

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Never Enough Water

Sunilda de Beltre keeps burning the family’s meal of beans. It’s not because she’s a bad cook. She just doesn’t have enough water to fill the pot. Truth is, there’s never enough water for any of her needs.

Sunilda’s lack of water isn’t for lack of her laborious efforts to gather it. Several times a day, the petite mother of four straps her youngest on her back and goes out to fill her containers with water from the nearest creek. She considers herself lucky too. Her source is just a 10-minute walk away, but she knows other women in the rural mountain community of Yacahueque must lug their heavy containers much farther — and often uphill.

During the dry season, the situation becomes much worse. The water table drops, and Sunilda and her neighbors are forced to dig holes in the dry creek bed and

wait for murky water to seep up and fill the cavity. This is a painstaking process. The muddiest water is scooped off and discarded until the puddle becomes clear enough to be drinkable. And if the wall of the hole collapses — an easy mistake to make — the whole process must begin again.

After all this work, the amount of water Sunilda and her neighbors are able to bring home hardly seems worth the effort. Not only is it too little for cooking, cleaning or farming — it’s also contaminated and risky to drink. Still, the families in Sunilda’s area continue to use the polluted source because there is no option. They drink poison, eat ashes and pray for survival.

If only Sunilda could have clean, abundant water on tap at her home, the way wealthier families in the cities do. The Church joins her in this prayer, and now it is partnering with her community to lift it from ashes to life — a goal you can participate in as you observe this Lenten season!

While her husband works, Sunilda de Beltre must bring her children with her to fetch water.

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Virtual Homelessness

YeidiYeidi Paula, a single mother in the humble town of Las

Parillas, sits outside her wooden shack, holding her toddler and communicating via hand signs.

Yeidi’s father explains she was born mute, and that she still lives with him in the house he built 37 years ago. Their only income is from his work as a farmer, but the grey-headed breadwinner with obvious signs of cataracts isn’t getting any younger. As Yeidi’s grandmother puts it, they “live off of prayer.”

There’s no telling how many times the family’s makeshift structure of splintering wood, crude concrete and rusty tin sheets has been repaired and rebuilt over the years; but if the cardboard patch on one exterior wall is an indication, it’s been a rough four decades. The floor is mostly dirt; and when the wind blows, it picks up dust clouds from a field across the road and sends the grime through gaps in the wooden slats. To make matters worse, family members must share beds because there’s just not enough room.

AngelOn a hilltop in the dusty outskirts

of Azua, Angel Salvador struggles to provide safe shelter for his wife and four children. Unfortunately, his shanty’s rotten wood and rusty tin sheets don’t stand up well to rainstorms, and the dirt floor too often turns to mud. It’s tragic, but this flimsy shack is the only home the poor truck driver can afford.

Concerned for his family, Angel saved what he could and bought rebar and concrete blocks to build a better house, but when emergencies arose — such as a child getting sick — he found himself having to sell the materials to cover other expenses.

When Angel heard the Church would be helping him with a new home, he was deeply moved by the wonderful news. In a step of faith, he even began to clear the way for the construction, taking down the rotten old shack in preparation for the new blessing to come...

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The Needs Next Door

“We’re living like goats.”

Bianela de la Santo, a poor mother of 12, can think of no better way to express how it feels to fetch all her water from a dirty stream and lug her heavy jug home by foot while her children wait unsupervised. But when asked for details about her daughter’s recent hospitalization from drinking dirty water, Bianela quickly turns the topic of conversation to the needs of her neighbors. This isn’t just about her family, she insists. The whole community is getting sick.

The creek water is so contaminated that a visitor mistook it for rum, and the water truck that sells a safer (but prohibitively expensive) supply doesn’t pass through their area regularly. The situation has gotten so bad, Bianela says, that neighbors thought a terrible virus was going around. Their agricultural efforts suffer too, because there isn’t enough water to irrigate the land.

“A farmer who works dry land is always working,” says Liberato Gerero Santana, an elderly community leader and lay Eucharistic minister. Ten years ago, an irrigation aqueduct was installed in his community, but it doesn’t supply the area with enough water. In fact, it isn’t even adequate for one community, and four neighboring areas also depend on its water. Even still, all five neighborhoods look for ways to share — because the Bible teaches them to be generous.

“Love your neighbor as yourself” is not just a spiritual saying in this part of the world. The remote Dominican Republic communities have internalized Christ’s teaching and take those words to heart, and just as they’ve suffered together, they are eager to solve their problems together. The Catholic Diocese of San Juan de la Maguana has helped develop this spirit of solidarity in them, and their beloved bishop, Jose Grullon Estrella, mentors them by nurturing a servant’s heart.

Now, with your prayers and support, the Diocese and its poorest families aim to work shoulder-to-shoulder for an incredible transformation! They want to elevate these destitute communities from ashes to life.

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“If I have things such as clothes, the sacraments, the Bible, and the ability to read and write, it is my responsibility to share them with the poor. If I don’t, I’m as bad as

the rich man who did not help Lazarus. So when I discovered the poverty of the people in my diocese, I had a responsibility to help them.”

~ Bishop Jose Grullon Estrella ~

SECTION II

THE SOLUTION

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The Backpack Bishop

Bishop Jose Grullon Estrella is a hero to the poor — in part because he so closely identifies with their suffering and their humble way of life.

Dominican by birth, Bishop Estrella struggled as a boy to gather water for his family, just as many of the poor do today. He remembers digging holes in a dry riverbed — like the women and children do today — and then scooping the water into barrels to load them on a donkey. As this remote area’s spiritual shepherd, he draws on this humble upbringing and makes it a priority to connect with everyone, traveling by mule to the most remote corners of his diocese. Through the years, he has visited many families, typically sharing in their meager meals and sleeping on their dirt floors.

Those trips allowed the bishop to see the plight of the struggling people firsthand and to hear voices that too often went unheard. He learned about these families’ greatest needs and developed a strategy for working alongside them to achieve their own most valued goals. Instead of just doing what had been done before — offering handouts to passive recipients — Bishop Estrella looked for ways to involve the people, energize their communities and meet specific needs.

At age 76, Bishop Estrella still lives up to his reputation as the “backpack bishop,” but he now travels by truck instead of a beast of burden and limits his overnight excursions to one trip per year. Even so, he insists on holding himself to the same standard he preaches — embracing a life of prayer and sacrifice.

“The mission of Christ is to evangelize, to share the Gospel,” he says. “If I talk but I don’t do, I’m not evangelizing.”

In that compassionate spirit, Bishop Estrella established FUNDASEP, the social outreach of the Diocese of San Juan de la Maguana. Today he works through FUNDASEP to help local communities shake off the ashes of abject poverty and fan the flames of the abundant life. His heart’s desire is to be a shoulder for the needy to lean on as they limp, then walk, then break into full stride to a brighter future, and he is depending on U.S. Catholics like you to fuel their forward march.

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The Bishop’s Charity: FUNDASEP

Should you find yourself following a road into one of the many remote communities in Bishop Estrella’s diocese, thank him — he and his FUNDASEP team likely built that street. His charity has changed thousands of lives since its founding in 1992, and with your help, he hopes it will soon change thousands more.

Over the years, FUNDASEP has done everything from building roads, bridges and schools to helping undocumented citizens obtain birth certificates. Eighty water systems and more than 1,000 brightly painted houses throughout the diocese testify to the ministry’s impact. But to convey FUNDASEP’s true value to the poor, a mere list of projects only tells half the story.

When Bishop Estrella created FUNDASEP, he dramatically altered the relationship between the local church and the communities it serves. He wanted to empower the poor to feel useful rather than helpless. He increased the number of parishes, added a lower level — the parish district — and within the districts, established community committees. These committees now serve as the bishop’s eyes and ears, identifying the most urgent needs and petitioning FUNDASEP’s help. The focus is not on what the diocese can do for the poor, but on what the poor can do as they work shoulder-to-shoulder with the diocese.

Shovel-Ready EmpowermentAt an outdoor community meeting, a motivated crowd chants “trabajar” — the Spanish word for

work. They yearn for clean water, and they are ready to give their time, talents and sweat to make that dream a reality. A FUNDASEP leader reminds them of their commitment to work, give and pray. But it’s clear the extra encouragement isn’t really needed. These families are eager to wield shovels, to raise money for a maintenance fund and to come together for weekly prayer meetings.

At the same gathering, FUNDASEP leads the group in a celebration that includes synchronized hand motions along with a battle cry, “Blessed by the Lord… Loved by Mary… In solidarity through the Holy Spirit.” These poor families are clearly ready mentally and spiritually for transformation. All they need now is one more thing — YOU!

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The Project: Clean Water

It takes great faith for the Dominican poor, who have spent a lifetime digging ditches in dry creek beds, to believe they may soon be able to quench their thirst with the turn of a spigot. The idea that they can work together to finally solve their water woes seems even unbelievable, but that is exactly what this ambitious project intends to achieve! When it succeeds — with your help — about 800 Dominican families will wake up one day soon to enjoy clean, abundant water flowing from household spigots!

As this miraculous “From Ashes to Life” outreach moves forward, your sacrificial gift will help cover costs to construct six FUNDASEP water systems. These systems will be customized to suit local terrain, but they typically depend on a combination of gravity and solar power to collect water from a spring or well and distribute it to every home. Pumps and tanks must be installed, and miles of trenches must be dug to lay the PVC pipes that will bring life-giving water to the doorsteps of the poor.

Each system you provide will include a filter to remove disease-causing contaminants and will be sturdy enough and simple enough to serve the people for many years to come under the supervision of a local water committee.

This incredible gift you provide will not only quench the thirst of the poor, reduce waterborne illness, promote good hygiene and ease the labor burden on women and children, but also help farmers irrigate their land to improve the volume and variety of their crops. This means better nutrition, better hydration, a growing economy and hope for the future! It’s all possible if you will stand with Cross Catholic Outreach to answer the prayers of the poor, and make this blessed outreach a reality!

A community work brigade reroutes a muddy stream to protect a spring water collection site and prepare for future construction.

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The Project: Safe Shelter

What was the good news that caused Angel Salvador to tear his house down to prepare the land for something new? It was the promise that his days of suffering in a makeshift shack would soon end. It was his trust in local Catholic leaders, supported by friends like you, to follow through on their promises of a better tomorrow.

Family by family, new life is springing from the ashes as FUNDASEP implements its house construction project. And now, you can join this life-changing effort!

This Lenten season, your sacrificial gift will help fund materials for 24 sturdy houses benefiting about 110 needy men, women and children whose lives will never be the same.

FUNDASEP uses a low-cost, durable design that has proven effective in sheltering poor Dominican families and withstanding powerful storms. Each FUNDASEP house is:

• Constructed from a prefabricated aluminum frame into which concrete plates are set.

• Designed to survive earthquakes.

• Sealed against water leaks that so often bring misery to the poor.

• 60% less expensive than the traditional concrete and rebar model.

• Sized at either 378 or 291 sq. ft., depending on family size.

• Just $5,179 on average to provide.

Rather than focusing on specific communities, FUNDASEP schedules its housing projects based on individual need throughout the diocese. Those in most dire need of safe shelter are served first. A typical 378-sq.-ft., three-bedroom floor plan.

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Target Area: Three Provinces

Your generosity will touch lives in a profound way in communities throughout the provinces of Elias Pina, San Juan and Azua, in the Diocese of San Juan de la Maguana. The six water systems will serve 15 communities, and the housing beneficiaries span 10 communities.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

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BudgetHOUSES

Item Amount needed

Prefabricated metal frame $21,585Foundation $9,991Roof $11,855Electrical installation $3,701Finishings $15,153Transportation $9,998Professional labor $12,154Administrative costs $17,548Bank costs $1,015Contingency costs $10,000Cross Catholic project management $11,300

Subtotal $124,300

COST PER HOUSE: $5,179

WATERItem Amount needed

Borehole $807

Fencing and other security measures $20,912

Electrical pumping systems $30,468

Water intake containment $12,518

Impulsion and adduction pipelines $48,943

Tanks or storage and distribution cistern $33,041

Secondary and distribution pipelines $75,567

Connectors to spigots $25,041

Other infrastructure costs $25,047

Travel and community meetings $7,395

Freight $16,232

Training $2,958

Salaries and administrative costs $52,889

Contingency $35,182

Cross Catholic project management $38,700

Subtotal $425,700

COST PER HOUSEHOLD: $532

TOTAL $550,000

Help us fund Bishop Estrella’s life-giving outreach!

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Help Dominican families shake off the ashes of poverty and fan the flames of hope!

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Bishop Estrella has sacrificed all for God and for the poor. This year, we invite you to show solidarity by directing your Lenten sacrifices toward his mission to the Dominican poor. Please use this special opportunity to PRAY for the Dominican people, to FAST in honor of Bishop Estrella’s ministry and to GIVE so his transformative housing and water projects can succeed.

By participating in this effort to quench thirst and shelter the needy, you participate in the sacrificial love of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Suffering Servant, who emptied himself for the sake of his Church. You are his hands of mercy, outstretched to lift the humble from the ashes to new life!

You may choose one of the sponsorship levels listed below or indicate another amount you are able to give. Every gift is greatly appreciated and will be handled with careful stewardship to benefit the poor.

$5,179 Empowerment Sponsor Can build one house.

$2,590 Transformation Sponsor Can join with another generous donor to build one house.

$26,600 Angel of Mercy Sponsor Can provide 50 families with clean water.

$10,640 Faithful Servant Sponsor Can provide 20 families with clean water.

Total Amount Needed: $550,000L E V E L S O F G I V I N G

EXTRA LENTEN SACRIFICE:In addition to one of the above giving levels, consider increasing your impact

with a special Lenten sacrificial gift — above and beyond what you would normally give!

What Will You Sacrifice?

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Our MissionWe mobilize the global Catholic Church to transform the poor and their communities materially and spiritually for the glory of Jesus Christ.

How We Serve Rather than create new institutions to distribute aid, we support existing ministries and churches already serving the poor. In addition to being the most cost-effective way of helping the poor, empowering these ministries allows us to support the Church’s spiritual mission and its important position of leadership in poor communities.

Good Stewardship We consider every gift we receive as a precious resource from God. We direct every donation to its intended project, provide honest and accurate reports to our donors, and keep overhead costs to an industry low. We handle funds with utmost integrity and hold our ministry partners in the field to the same high standards by asking them to document costs and the impact of their outreach. These detailed accountability measures have earned us ongoing accreditation by the following organizations:

Proceeds from this campaign will be used to cover any expenditures for this project incurred through June 30, 2019, the close of our ministry’s fiscal year. In the event that more funds are raised than needed to fully fund the project,

the excess funds, if any, will be used to meet the most urgent needs of the ministry.

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