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Where We Work
Click on the location for complete description.
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Belize
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 Belize abounds with ecological treasures, from the second largest barrier reef in the world to intricate cave systems and waterfalls in pristine tropical forests. Belizean society includes Creole, Mestizo, Garifuna, and Maya in a remarkably diverse population. Despite its cultural and ecological resources, Belize is burdened by a large foreign debt and expanding trade deficit, the effects of which can be seen in a lack of financial resources for education, health, and social services. Widespread poverty is a natural result. Since 1994, Peacework has provided services to Belizean schools, support for literacy and education programs, and resources for increasing access to affordable health care. Dangriga and the surrounding Stann Creek District is the site of a Peacework Village Network pilot program with the University of Arkansas where a remarkable variety of education, social services, health care, agricultural, engineering, and other projects are underway. Similar partnerships and tremendous service opportunities exist with schools, orphanages, social services, and others throughout the country from Placencia in the south to Corozal in the north.
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Cameroon
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 Cameroon is a microcosm of the African continent including mountains, coast, rain forest, savannah, and desert. The country is well suited to farming and forestry with cocoa, peanuts, cotton, and rain forest timbers including precious woods such as mahogany. Though Cameroon’s economy is still largely based on subsistence agriculture, rapid urbanization is greatly contributing to economic pressures. In collaboration with United Action for Children, a thorough assessment of local needs has been conducted throughout the southwestern region of Cameroon. Project recommendations include purification and distribution of safe drinking water, construction of latrines that greatly improve sanitation and health conditions, projects that reduce respiratory illnesses among women with better kitchen ventilation, and planning sustainable family farms. Local partners struggle with a variety of critical social concerns, including gender issues in rural development, malnutrition among children, limited access to health care, and child labor and trafficking. Economic improvement efforts include vocational training, education, and alternative income generation.
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Dominican Republic
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 The Dominican Republic reflects many of the social and economic development issues common throughout Latin America. Poverty and malnutrition are endemic in many barrios and particularly in the very poor Haitian bateyes where laborers and their families live near sugarcane plantations. In Barahona, Peacework is engaged with grassroots development organizations to build community centers, schools, and clinics and provide critical medical services to an immigrant population that does not have access to governmental health care and education. The Centro Educativo Arras school was founded to provide educational services to those families in Barahona while a rotation of Peacework medical volunteers serve in clinics around these communities. The benefits of a multi-disciplinary program in the rural bateyes near Barahona involving business, education, medicine, social services, and agriculture are potentially tremendous.
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Ghana
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 Walking the streets of Accra, one frequently sees groups of children living behind shops or under bridges -- older children taking care of the younger ones that have been either abandoned to the streets or orphaned by AIDS. While these children survive with their own ingenuity, they may indeed thrive with resources and support from students, faculty, and professionals from our colleges and universities. Volunteers help with construction of facilities for children, medical services, education, tutoring, mentoring, social services, and job training. Based on a continuing relationship between Peacework and the Graduate School of Social Work at Virginia Commonwealth University, an expanded multi-disciplinary program in Ghana would offer a whole new way of life for thousands and can literally transform this and other communities.
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Honduras
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 Honduras lies at the heart of Central America and has a fascinating history from the vast Mayan nation to the coastal Miskito and Garifuna groups. Honduras is still one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Children in rural areas often suffer from malnutrition, iron deficiencies, and low birth weight. Peacework offers several community projects in Honduras, including the Children’s Village near La Ceiba or medical services in San Lucia, Danli, and rural villages throughout the northern coastal region and central highlands. Imagine the benefits for an orphanage engaged with a college in small business enterprises for youth and young adults, tutoring for younger children, and nursing services that greatly enhance basic qualities of life. In San Lucia, Peacework has received a plot of land on which to build a retreat center and clinic from which medical teams can be disbursed throughout the region.
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India
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 Despite a burgeoning IT industry and measurable economic rejuvenation, Calcutta continues to battle with pockets of extreme poverty among the more than 14 million inhabitants. Various socioeconomic factors have contributed to rapid expansion of slums, refugee colonies, and squatter settlements with widespread social, environmental, health, and economic implications. Peacework has assisted in construction of health facilities and supported educational services in the slums around Calcutta. The Loreto School serves over 1400 children in Sealdah, many of whom are homeless and live on the streets or train tracks nearby. Partners are needed to help repair and support village schools and for medical professionals to serve in primary care clinics. Partnerships built around a local school or college have tremendous possibilities for employing a variety of academic and professional disciplines around issues of extreme poverty and hunger. An international service project organized in 2006 for the Clinton School of Public Service explored ways to expand the Loreto School model of community education to other villages in the eastern regions of India.
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Nepal
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 Nepal is very diverse for a small country, both ethnically and geographically, and boasts eight of the ten highest mountains on Earth. Nepal is also among the poorest countries in the world with half of its population living below the poverty line. Lack of quality education persists with overcrowded classrooms and a large percentage of children who are unable to attend due to lack of funds or needing to work. Peacework is collaborating with local partners on school construction projects in Katmandu and Baktapur. Peacework also supports an initiative that invests in community-based schools in return for sustained long-term scholarships for the neediest children in the area. Programs support women’s groups in alternative income generation, agriculture, micro-credit enterprises, social services, and vocational training.
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Russia
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 Since 1982, Peacework has organized service projects with Children’s Homes and schools all across the former Soviet Union. These institutions are permanent homes to many children with moderate to severe disabilities or who have been abandoned or neglected. There are many opportunities for developing a multi-disciplinary partnership with an institution in one of these settings from Moscow and small neighboring towns like Noginsk and Istra to Blagoveschensk in Siberia. A community within itself, Orphanage No. 4 in Pavlovsk is home to 600 children with cognitive disabilities and Orphanage No. 105 in Moscow boasts a growing arts and cultural program for children with special needs. Short-term services include basic renovations to the facilities or developmentally appropriate activities with the children. Long-term possibilities include vocational training, mentoring, and financial assistance for those who will and must move from their home into Russian society. The village design, applied to an orphanage where children who otherwise would never have any opportunities, offers invaluable resources for education, social skills, vocation, guidance, and transition to Russian society outside the institution.
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Vietnam
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 Peacework and its Vietnamese partners have collaborated on projects with villages throughout the Mekong Delta’s labyrinth of canals, tributaries, and rice fields since 1997. Peacework and university partners have built schools throughout the Mekong region, in the provinces of Dong Thap and Ben Tre, as well as further north in Dalat and Hanoi. In Nhatrang, Peacework has built four new buildings of the Khanh Hoa Rehabilitation Hospital complex on Ho Chong Bay. Vietnam offers fascinating opportunities to become engaged with a community in different disciplines, learn about the evolving social and market system of this emerging economy, and experience the intriguing cultures and politics of Vietnam.
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