A Look at Our Haiti Twinning Ministry: St. Philip Neri’s Partnership in “Mission” with St. Malachy

St. Malachy’s Haiti Mission began in 1996 when St. Malachy Parish in Brownsburg, Indiana partnered with Ste. Marguerite Parish in Port Margot, Haiti to make improvements in health care, water, and education for the Port Margot community, pray for one another, and share concern for the needs of the parishes.

Since 1996, St. Malachy Parish has been providing medical, dental, vision, educational, economic, and water purification assistance through a faith-based, long-term relationship with the 46,000 members of Ste. Marguerite Parish, its five chapels, and the Port Margot community in northern Haiti.

The St. Malachy Haiti Mission is composed of several programs — Medical, Dental, Water, Education, and Twinning. Several times a year, volunteer doctors, dentists, optometrists, engineers, and water purification experts from Brownsburg and the Indianapolis area travel to Port Margot on mission trips to aid their brothers and sisters in Haiti.

The St. Malachy Clinic was established in 2002 when a two-room kindergarten was converted into the first medical clinic during a mission trip. The building has since been expanded to include a pharmacy, laboratory, and a second-story addition for a maternity clinic. The clinic provides medical care to hundreds of patients weekly and the delivery of babies daily.

The Servants of Mary, ministers to the sick, have managed the St. Malachy Clinic since 2008. The salaries for the clinic staff are provided through donations and by an endowment. The Servants of Mary obtain donations to help with medical and pharmacy supplies.

The maternity program began in 2012 with prenatal screening, vitamins, and wellness during pregnancy. A maternity unit was built and dedicated in 2014. This unit provides the only skilled health care and modern facilities for women of this rural area in northern Haiti with over 50,000 people.

The clinic is staffed three days a week with a dentist who focuses on the extraction and restoration of teeth and the reduction of infections caused by poor dental health. Over the years, the Indiana University School of Dentistry (IUSD) has provided great support with mission trips.

In Haiti, less than half of the population has access to clean water. Many Haitians travel long distances to get water for their homes — typically from local wells, streams, or rivers. Water sources are often contaminated due to the ongoing lack of sustainable sewage collection, and water treatment is non-existent in Haiti. St. Malachy, through its water program, has implemented two water treatment systems to help with this and continues to support upkeep and repairs to maintain these systems.

The St. Malachy Sponsor-a-Child Program began in 2004 to help Ste. Marguerite parish with the two schools that they operate. The Ste. Theresa School is located behind the rectory and has 1,500 children attending. It has a primary and secondary program in addition to an afternoon class with 500 children that have never attended school and need reading, writing, and math skills. The Ste. Joseph School is near the clinic and has 1,000 children attending their primary level program. Both schools have difficulty with operations due to the inability of 90 percent of the families to pay the yearly tuition expenses. The St. Malachy Sponsor-a-Child Program sponsors 250 children annually to attend school.

In addition to the above-mentioned programs, the St. Malachy Haiti Mission also includes the Parish Twinning Program, which establishes partnerships with other parishes in helping Haiti. St. Philip Neri Church began such a partnership with St. Malachy Church in 2021 to help the community of Port Margot in northern Haiti.

To date, through your generous giving, St. Philip Neri has tithed $14,450 to support this mission partnership. These funds have been utilized to support the staff salary expense of the medical clinic and provide tuition and salary support for the Ste. Marguerite parish schools. In addition, a portion of the funds we tithed were used to purchase musical instruments and supplies for the parish choir and scouts to enhance their celebration of Mass.

As travel to Haiti begins to open, St. Malachy will resume its mission trips. We at St. Philip Neri look forward to continuing our partnership in the Haiti mission through the Twinning Program and will be providing regular updates going forward.

Haiti Snapshot

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80 percent of the population living on less than $2.00 per day.

Ongoing corruption, political instability, resurgent gang violence, illiteracy and barriers to education, food shortages, unemployment, and vulnerability to natural disasters have kept most Haitians locked in a cycle of poverty for generations. Widespread famine is a real and growing threat.