Milestones - 1990's

Worked with the L’Arche organization to develop a national conference in Kansas City, Missouri, to help advance the care of developmentally disabled children and adults.

Organized film workshops throughout the United States to share paradigms of quality child care with foster parents.

Served as a consultant to the Child Welfare League of America on the development of a curriculum to improve national standards for foster and adoptive care.

Presented workshops in Budapest, Hungary, to help improve the care of institutionalized children in Eastern Europe and initiated plans for a workshop/conference for ten Eastern Block countries to demonstrate innovative child care methods.

Consulted with Croatian Social Services in the development of foster care and adoption programs in Croatia and supplied training materials to assist their efforts.

Through a 15-State consortium, produced two films on effective strategies for the recruitment and retention of foster and adoptive parents titled “Pride”. The film highlights common issues that caregivers may encounter as a result of past sexual abuse, adolescence, bi-racial adoption, etc., and provides insight into how to best address each situation. Today, the film serves as a model for parents, social workers, and educators in all 50 states and has been translated into four languages.

 
 
1992
Confronting the crisis in the Balkans.

  

The war over territory, ethnicity, and religion which ravaged the Balkan region long before its end in Kosovo, was without a doubt Europe's worst war since World War II. Unlike previous conflicts fought on battlefields, this war was taken from house to house where tens of thousands of civilians, including women and children, were killed shamelessly.

  
When millions of people poured into refugee camps, San Felipe Humanitarian Alliance was there to coordinate local and international relief organizations. We began working primarily with the Zagreb-based Suncokret program, a grass-roots organization which was the only independent local program providing support throughout the region.

Among our first tasks was assisting them in the recruitment and training of local and international volunteers to work in refugee camps in Croatia and Bosnia.
 
To help organize volunteer efforts efficiently, San Felipe helped Suncokret develop a comprehensive training and policy manual. The manual for Suncokret helped them become the first non-profit social service agency in a post-Communist country and has since served as a global model to assist communities in disaster relief efforts. (Today, the manual is used as a model for community-initiated relief efforts worldwide.) At the camps, San Felipe focused its work on addressing the immediate needs of the most vulnerable victims-the youngest and the oldest. Once the basic needs had been met, we quickly realized that helping families overcome the feelings of helplessness, magnified by the dependent environment of refugee camps, was vital to their well-being. To offset the emotional hardships of the camp environment, refugees were encouraged to plan ways to improve camp conditions, participate as a family in camp activities, develop plans for an eventual return to their homes, or realistically assess their future options when a return to their homeland wasn't possible.  
   

1993		  
Among San Felipe's proudest accomplishments was the establishment of a summer recreational program in Toposka, Croatia, which integrated Christian refugee children with local Moslem children. An abandoned Serbian military post, which San Felipe renovated with the help of local and international volunteers, served as the site for the program. While re-establishing a sense of childhood among children in the war-torn region, the program ultimately promoted cultural tolerance among youth of different religious and ethnic backgrounds who participated in the program. San Felipe Humanitarian Alliance continued to raise money for refugee relief services in Bosnia and Croatia by writing and distributing over 100 funding proposals.  
   

1995		  
Assessed residential programs for homeless teenagers nationwide and compiled the most successful approaches to help develop a model for New Avenues for Youth, an outgrowth of Northwest Advocates for Youth in Portland, Oregon. New Avenues for Youth is a comprehensive wrap-around program for homeless youth providing everything from shelter and education to transitional services that ensure independence.

Worked with community groups in San Francisco, San Diego, New York, Kansas, and especially Portland to develop innovative approaches to meeting the critical needs of homeless children and their families. Contributed to the production of “Street Talk and Tuxes”, a documentary film on the plight of homeless teenagers in America.		  
   

1998
Making a difference in the aftermath of Mitch.

  
In October of 1998, Hurricane Mitch struck much of Central America, causing widespread devastation, suffering and death. In the aftermath of Mitch-the deadliest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded-at least 10,000 people were dead, more than 13,000 were missing and over one million were left homeless. Nicaragua was particularly hard hit by severe flooding and mudslides which  
destroyed thousands of homes and displaced some 14,000 families as a result. Initially, San Felipe Humanitarian Alliance went to work assisting local and international relief organizations in Posoltega, one of the hardest hit areas in the country. Due to the tremendous devastation, Posoltega was also where most local and international humanitarian organizations were dedicating their services.
After a few days, the decision was made to move on to Nueva Vida, a refugee camp in acute need of assistance that was virtually being ignored by the Nicaraguan government and the international aid community.
 


1999
Nueva Vida, Nicaragua
Starting over in Nueva Vida ("New Life"). 		 

More than 12,000 people were living in extremely primitive conditions at Nueva Vida, a relocation camp set up just 30 kilometers outside of Managua. Babies were dying of malnutrition. Elderly were dying from lack of medical care and poor sanitation. Children were running around without shoes or clothing. San Felipe Humanitarian Alliance stepped in and quickly made a difference. Among our first tasks was the expedient offering of materials to help camp residents make wooden cots. Simple-except that getting people off the ground was a necessity to reduce the spread of diseases that were running rampant in the camp. Simple-except that providing materials to build a bed gives people a little control over their lives, in a way that simply giving them a bed could never do. Since people had to make ten beds to receive one for themselves, the process also helped instill a sense of self-responsibility among camp residents.

To offset the absence of activities and school at the camp, San Felipe turned a canopy in the middle of the camp into a makeshift recreational/educational center. With the help of locals and a handful of international volunteers, we began to rotate various activities for the children-from baseball games and art projects to teaching the children how to grow vegetables. Eventually, teachers from the public school system began to arrive and used our canopy as the site for daily schooling.

Our greatest accomplishment in Nueva Vida was setting up a permanent medical clinic, Clinica San Felipe. Two full-time doctors were hired and with the help of the Spanish Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and Northwest Medical Teams International, who donated medicine and supplies, we were able to open an on-site pharmacy and provide medical, dental, eye and pre-natal care. Clinica San Felipe gave Nueva Vida residents a chance at starting the new life they might not otherwise have had.



Kosovo
Beginning anew at the end of the war.
  

Following the peace settlement, San Felipe Humanitarian Alliance was among the first organizations to begin operating inside Kosovo. While other larger organizations were still doing research or finding quarters for staff, we immediately went to work helping refugees return to their homes safely and begin the long process of rebuilding their homes and their communities. In response to the mass destruction of entire towns throughout Kosovo, San Felipe Humanitarian Alliance opened eight residential centers which housed nearly 3,000 returning refugees. The process of constructing and rebuilding structures to provide temporary housing will continue until permanent homes are rebuilt and families are resettled into their communities. While working alongside members of various communities, we discovered that the restoration of people's lives was being held back by the lack of closure felt by families who had lost loved ones in the genocidal intent of the Serbian invasion. Without any preconceived notions of what people needed, we talked and listened to the Kosovars to help them overcome the traumas that devastated their lives.

A monumental first step toward healing.
One month prior to the peace settlement, 18 young men and one young woman from the town of Zahac, Kosovo, were gunned down in a ruthless massacre. To this day, their bodies have not been found.

When San Felipe arrived in Zahac shortly after the peace settlement, they were met with a community immobilized by grief and anger. Without any bodies to put to rest, the mothers, fathers, wives, and children who had lost loved ones in the massacre lacked any sense of closure. "If only we had a grave," said one woman tearfully.

Her comment sparked a solution in the mind of San Felipe's Robert Del Conte‹a way to turn something evil into something good. He promptly organized a community meeting to discuss his idea with the townspeople. His proposal to construct a monument to honor the dead was greeted with enthusiasm by all. The construction process rallied everyone together for a common cause. An architect volunteered his services to design the monument. The mayor donated land at the site of the massacre on which the monument would be erected. Old women brought food for everyone working at the construction site.It was truly a group effort that brought the whole community together with a sense of purpose and empowerment.

The dedication ceremony for the monument-the first monument constructed in Kosovo to honor victims of the war-was attended by nearly 3,000 people from the surrounding region. Through the many tears in the crowd, it became clear the memorial service to honor Zahac's young victims was, in fact, a cathartic memorial to all the victims of Kosovo_s tragic war.

The peace settlement brought the war to an end, and the monument in Zahac brought peace to all the people whose loved ones made the ultimate sacrifice in exchange for freedom.

This example is emblematic of San Felipe's approach. Working side-by-side with people who need our assistance, we find innovative ways to help them overcome whatever obstacles stand in their way. The construction of the memorial in Zahac proved to be a monumental first step on the long road to recovery.