When Compassion Meets Action

During Team Hope 2025, we witnessed not only life-changing medical care, but also the powerful impact of everyday interventions that often go unnoticed, clean water, safe air, education, and improved living conditions.

Dr. Jeff beautifully captured this vision in a reflection he shared with our team. His words remind us that while surgeries and medicines can transform lives in visible ways, it is often the quieter, long-term efforts that shape healthier futures and save lives.

A Reflection from Dr. Jeff

The recent Project Hope trip to Guatemala was an amazing testament to great people accomplishing great things. Piece by piece, it may not seem that significant, but as a whole, it is an important and impactful body of work. It is more obvious how medicines prescribed from the clinic or surgeries in the OR can change lives. It might be harder to see the enormous impact of the education or home environment work.

Education….especially reading by 8-9 years old ….can markedly improve the long-term health of the individual. Adults learning skills that lead to better housing and nutrition have a huge impact on the family’s health. But it might be easy to overlook the life-saving work of those that provide clean water and smoke-free air for many of the poorest families in Guatemala. Worldwide and in rural Guatemala, diarrheal illness and lung problems are major killers of children. These illnesses are common all over, but if you add terrible nutrition , parasites from water, and lungs working poorly from smoke and limited access to care….instead sick for a week or two ….many die. Clean water and clean air always matter…but for those we are serving, it can help them learn and grow…or often make the ultimate difference of life and death. Your work on water filters and stoves may not seem as glamorous as clinics and surgeries, but it is a critical part of our whole package of promoting health and treating illness. The water, the air, the education, the clinics, the surgeries…. All a strong set of overlapping circles that will have an immense long-term effect on the lives of those we serve.

Your work inspires us all.

Thank You,

Jeff