Ellen Miller, a parishoner of St. Mary since the 1980s, with children in the village of Santa Maria de Jesus in Guatemala. Ms. Miller works as a respiratory nurse at St. Vincent’s in Bridgeport, and has gone on medical missions to the village for the last eight years.
Water, such a basic need and plentiful here, shouldn’t be taken for granted.
For the people living in the village of Santa Maria de Jesus, Guatemala, water supply is so inaccessible that they have to walk miles to get to water that isn’t even clean.
That’s why St. Mary Parish, partnered with Sacred Heart University and St. Peter’s of Bridgeport, to host Walk for Water April 26.
The fund-raiser event aimed to provide 500 impoverished families with Sawyer water filters, which will purify up to a million gallons of water.
The walk raised $9,500 and the church was able to collect additional funds, totaling the amount raised to $17,000.
“There’s no place for the people in the village to get clean water; there’s parasites in the water that lead to constant infections and malnutrition in children and in families,” said Ellen Miller, a member of St. Mary’s Catholic Action Team who has served the people of Santa Maria de Jesus for eight years through Helping Hands Medical Missions.
The village has been devastated by the destruction of water pipelines after recent severe hurricanes, as well as political corruption.
On her most recent trip, in November 2013, Ms. Miller saw the horrific effects of malnutrition in a little girl whose hair was growing without any color.
Ms. Miller, who works as a medical respiratory nurse at St. Vincent’s in Bridgeport, also worked with infants who were significantly underweight and other children who had signs of vitamin deficiency — all stemming from the ongoing water crisis.
“Water is the basic necessity of human life and everyone deserves it,” she said. “I’ve been going on mission trips for 13 years, and Guatemala has really become home for me; the people in this village suffer from extreme poverty, but they value life and are so spiritually rich that you get help while you’re helping them — your heart is forever changed.”
Ellen Miller, a parishoner of St. Mary since the 1980s, with a family n the village of Santa Maria de Jesus in Guatemala.
Ms. Miller, who has been a St. Mary’s parishioner and Ridgefield resident since the 1980s, brought up the water supply issue in Guatemala at an action team meeting a few years ago, and members of the committee went to work trying to alleviate the community’s suffering.
“Originally we were going to try for a well, but there’s too many infrastructure problems,” said Mary Staudt, chair of the church’s action team, who has organized Walk for Water initiatives before for Nepal and Ethiopia. “Walk for Water usually raises money to build wells, but in this situation, getting filters for each family is what will work best.”
The village of Santa Maria de Jesus has been crippled by political instability, which has made electricity unreliable.
As a result, families have to walk to the bottom of a volcano to pump water and carry it back to the village.
“People have to carry buckets up a mountain — it takes two to three hours, and it’s not even purified water,” Ms. Staudt said. “Then it sits there for a few days and gets contaminated.
“They can get water on a Tuesday for the week and by Thursday it’s contaminated,” she said. “These are families living on four dollars a day; it’s a very poor village.”
Ms. Miller said it is common for families to drink standing water and rainwater, which is full of parasites.
Sacred Heart, whose nursing students go on medical trips to the village two or three times a year, will deliver the water filters. A local church, Guatemala Iglesia del Camino, will distribute the filters to the families.
“The church there has volunteers who will help teach the families how to use the filters,” Ms. Staudt said.
St. Mary will continue to raise funds for filters with more filters scheduled to be sent with Ms. Miller when she makes her annual trip later this year.
So far, the church has raised enough money to send 283 filters to the village.
On her trip last November, Ms. Miller went with two Ridgefield High School students, Analise Giobbi and Josefina Altamiranda, as well as doctors and other nurses from St. Vincent’s.
“The girls said it was the best thing they ever did,” Ms. Miller said. “Talking and sitting with the people of the village, making a difference in their lives …
“When you’re living here in America, it’s easy to forget why you do what you do,” she said. “The trip is a wonderful reminder of your vocation, of why some of us chose to be doctors and nurses, and it makes you better at what you do.”
To support this effort visit hhmm.org.
