Who We Are

Hand in Hand Ministries believes that all people deserve life’s essentials – food, water, clothing, shelter, education and medical care. Although we consider ourselves faith-based, we do not proselytize, and we welcome all people of good will – believers and non-believers -- who wish to join us in changing the world.

Our faith base is simple: we believe in a kind, loving God who created the universe, that we are made in His or Her image, and that we are called to reflect God’s love in the way we treat our brothers and sisters, the world in which we live and all the creatures who reside there. Actions are most important in showing our love for each other, and we elect to leave disagreements about the finer points of theology and cosmology to others.

It has always been vitally important, and is especially so in the world today, that people of different beliefs, races and all of the other factors that divide us, to be able to work together for the common good.

Hand in Hand Ministries attempts to make its vision a reality by establishing its own programs to serve specific local needs – determined in cooperation with the local population -- and forming partnerships with local organizations and individuals in that specific location. We work where needed – but especially in Central America, the Caribbean and Appalachia.

Our hope is that our efforts will give people the dignity, hope and skills to one day become self-sufficient and enable them to help others.

An important part of what we do is offer people in the United States and Canada the opportunity for hands-on experiences of the places we work through our program of Immersion Trips. We hope that the authentic experience of the people and country the trips provide will inspire people to return home with a better understanding of themselves and their own circumstances. Furthermore, that this will result in more compassion for all people and a desire to build a more just world.

In all that we do, we seek to build community.

How Hand in Hand Ministries Came to Be

In November of 1994, Hand in Hand Ministries co-founder Wayne Fowler visited Kingston, Jamaica, and his experiences there forever transformed his life.

Fowler took a short holiday from his teaching job and traveled to Kingston to visit a home for handicapped and abandoned children. It was his first visit out of the United States, and it not only changed the way he looked at himself but his country and the world.

In Jamaica he visited the home and met a 12-year-old girl who lay in a baby bed, her body twisted like a pretzel, and other children so badly handicapped that they were unable to shoo the flies from their faces. Some had been given up by their parents while others had been found by the roadside or in a culvert, placed there to be washed away with the next rain.

However, it was not only the children and the condition of the orphanage that greatly affected Fowler, it was the tens of thousands of children and families living in hovels made of zinc, cardboard and found pieces of wood that wouldn’t pass for a doghouse in the United States.

Fowler returned home the afternoon before Thanksgiving, and it was difficult the next day to sit at a table heaped with mounds of turkey and dressing and not think of the children in the home and all over Kingston who were eating rice with grizzled meat, or perhaps a fish head, added for flavor and nutrition.

Fowler found it impossible to put the experience behind him. His life had been transformed, and he felt that he had to do something for the children he had met – even if it was something small.

Fowler and his brother, the Rev. Joseph Fowler, began helping in small ways until January 1997 when he led a group of 29 people to Kingston to do construction and medical work. Several weeks after the group returned, they had a potluck dinner where they shared stories and photos of their trip, and 75 or 80 people showed up. People who’d made the trip were so excited that they’d brought their spouses, family and friends to share in their experience.

In many ways, that was the birth of Hand in Hand Ministries.

Fowler left teaching and began working full time to serve the poor on July 1, 1997. Hand in Hand Ministries was subsequently incorporated in August of 1999 to work with the poorest of the poor in Central America and the Caribbean.

The organization’s budget that first five months was about $26,000, while it must raise $1.4 million to meet its projected budget for 2008.