A couple of Bible verses may come to mind when you talk with Dr. Ben and Jen Fredrick.
Galatians 6:2: Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
1 John 3:18: Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. (NIV)
Ben and Jen created Thriving Villages International, a nonprofit that helps residents of Haiti – mainly in the area of Pestel, a region that doesn’t get much attention from major world relief organizations.
The Fredricks’ passion for helping people in Haiti started with what Jen calls a series of “little steps at a time.”
Two boys are at the center of this story, because they pretty much lit the fuse – set things in motion for what was about to happen.
A series of small steps begins
Thanksgiving was approaching in 2006 when Ben, a physician at Penn State Health Medical Group in Hershey, Pennsylvania, found out about a teenage boy from Haiti who needed a host family.
Anderson, who was 16 at the time, needed surgery to repair a hole in his heart.
Penn State Hershey Medical Center would provide the surgery at no cost, and an organization called Angel Missions Haiti agreed to handle Anderson’s transportation to the U.S.
But the boy needed a place to stay where someone could look after him as he recovered from his operation.
Ben and Jen thought about how welcoming Anderson to the household might impact their kids and family life, and said yes. He stayed with the family for three months in early 2007.
Another boy, 12-year-old Nelson, came to live with the Fredricks shortly after Anderson returned to Haiti.
Suffering from congestive heart failure, Nelson needed a new mitral valve due to damage from bacteria related to strep throat.
As Ben noted, Nelson’s lack of access to penicillin for his strep infection created a very serious problem that probably wouldn’t have happened to most children in the U.S. Nelson’s valve was replaced, and he went back to Haiti.
A fateful visit to Haiti
Concerned about the environment the boys had returned to, Ben decided to visit them in Haiti.
He wanted to see how Anderson and Nelson were doing, of course, but also felt a need to see the daily struggles so many Haitians face in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.
Anderson is from Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital and largest city. Nelson is from Pestel, home to around 70,000 people near the northern Caribbean coast, in the part of Haiti that juts westward toward Jamaica.
The Pestel region, according to international humanitarian aid organization Church World Service, is “an area which has been historically marginalized.”
That was Ben’s first foreign trip. He’d never had a passport until that visit to Haiti in October 2007.
Ben related his experience this way at thrivingvillages.com: “I met with the only Haitian physician for the entire Pestel area, Dr. Phillipe Seneque, who showed me his health center with its barren pharmacy.
“He described the overwhelming needs of Pestel. He told me one haunting story of a 6-year-old boy who had died of tetanus the week before we arrived. I was dumbfounded, then angered. No one should die of tetanus anymore.”
Ben visited a few other villages, and found the same conditions everywhere – people needed health care, education, and water.
A Franciscan nun, Sister Fidelis, did all she could for Nelson before he traveled to the U.S. for his surgery. She bought medications to keep fluid from accumulating in Nelson’s lungs, which kept him alive.
As Jen said, “On that first trip, seeing the need was really transformative” for Ben.
Ben was hoping to find groups that would lend a hand to aid residents of that part of Haiti, but “we couldn’t find any other organization to go out there.”
He said, “The big organizations focus on the more densely populated regions.”
Thriving Villages International springs to life
So Ben and Jen decided to launch Thriving Villages International, a Christian organization with the mission of demonstrating God’s compassion to the poorest of the poor in Haiti’s rural areas.
Thriving Villages partners with a group of Pestel residents called Kretyan Pwogré Ansanm (Christians Progress Together) to save and improve lives.
Their efforts include buying books for students and helping with teacher salaries; providing emergency food, seeds and goats; and making it possible for over 200 students at Pestel’s only public secondary school to have free, filtered drinking water.
Natural disasters in the last dozen years have only made life tougher for many Haitians.
An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck near Port-au-Prince in 2010. Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti in 2016, with winds up to 145 mph and torrential rain.
Last summer, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck, centered in the southwestern peninsula. The epicenter was only a few miles from Pestel. Tropical Depression Grace pounded the country just two days later.
Deaths and injuries measured in the thousands, and millions of people were impacted as homes, schools, businesses and other structures were destroyed or heavily damaged.
The 2021 earthquake is believed to have destroyed or damaged more than 137,000 homes, according to Church World Service. Many residents can’t afford the building materials needed to repair their damaged homes.
CWS said, “Large parts of the town of Pestel are in ruin and surrounding areas have been significantly affected.”
Pestel residents try to pick up the pieces
After recovering, both Nelson and Anderson are doing well.
Nelson now volunteers with Thriving Villages International, to help his friends and neighbors in Pestel.
But while the region’s residents are picking up the pieces, gang violence in Haiti adds to anxieties related to poverty. After the earthquake and storm last year, Nelson made several high-risk trips to deliver relief supplies.
“At one point,” Jen said, “their vehicle was stopped but when people recognized Nelson as a local resident who works to help the poor, he was allowed to proceed and keep his supplies.”
Thriving Villages International relies on volunteers from various regions to oversee distribution of resources in their areas. “We have always worked with people who are respected and trusted in their areas,” Jen noted.
Concern for the world beyond Haiti
The Fredricks have a heart for Haiti, but their international connections go beyond the nation that shares an island in the Caribbean with the Dominican Republic.
They’ve welcomed guests from around the world into their home in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, for years – since their 18-year-old son, Micah, and 16-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, were very young.
Five heart patients have been part of the Ben and Jen household before and after surgeries, along with several exchange students.
Keaidi, a student from China, is in college but comes home for the weekends. She’s been with the Fredricks since she was 12. The family also is hosting Josh, a young man whose parents are missionaries in Tanzania. Josh attends college, and lives in Ben and Jen’s home in the summer and during school breaks.
“Micah, Keaidi and Elizabeth have been essential parts of our ability to work in Haiti and open our home to others,” Jen said. “They are happy to have ‘brothers and sisters’ all over the world.”
Helping students widen their horizons
Ben is immersed in the world in another significant way as Penn State College of Medicine’s Global Health Center Director.
Penn State students on their way to earning their MD degrees can participate in the university’s Global Health Scholars Program.
The students travel abroad for immersive visits that help them learn about supporting and addressing needs for underserved and under-resourced communities.
Ben is leading a group of students visiting Ghana this year. Other planned sites for 2022 are Vietnam, Australia, Brazil, Ecuador, Nepal and Zambia.
Student involvement in the Global Health Scholars Program has grown steadily since the program launched in 2008.
From a handful of students the first year, about one-fourth of medical school students now participate – a level of commitment Ben finds encouraging and a bit surprising.
“The students are very socially minded,” he said. “They care about serving people in extreme poverty, including here at home.”
Thankful for God’s guiding hand
Jen said she and Ben have seen God’s hand in the process many times as they’ve worked with others to help people in the midst of “incredible need.”
“Along the way, we’ve seen God provide direction,” she said.
The Fredricks are graduates of Messiah College (now Messiah University) in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.
Jen told The Bridge, a Messiah publication, “Christianity is meant to be lived out. Our love for Christ should change us and cause us to love others.”
Isaiah 58:10 is a verse with deep meaning to Jen and Ben. If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. (ESV)
(Photos by Matt Lester. Haiti photos are courtesy of Ben and Jen Fredricks.)