Hands Together roots date back to 1985 when Father Tom Hagan, O.S.F.S., who was serving as chaplain to Lafayette and Moravian Colleges in Pennsylvania, led a group of students on a visit to Haiti. When he returned, Father Tom realized that the experience in Haiti had a profound impact on the students and he immediately recognized an opportunity for college students to become more sensitive to the plight of the people in this impoverished country. Educating, encouraging, and inspiring the students to translate their Haiti experience into a compassionate response to help the poor were the seeds sown by Father Hagan that eventually grew into the Hands Together of today.
By mid-1989, students from different schools, including Smith College, MIT, University of Massachusetts, Boston College, and University of Kansas, visited Haiti through Hands Together's programs. At this point, the program had grown into a recognized intercampus volunteer & relief organization, and as a result Hands Together, Inc. was established as a nonprofit corporation.
Hands Together continued its effort to bring as many people as possible to Haiti. In May 1989, the first adult/professional trip was completed, involving for the first time people from all walks of life, including professors, doctors, and lawyers. Our success with college students helped us understand that the benefits from the Haiti volunteer experience transcended a specific group of people.
During the 1990s, Hands Together increased its activities in Haiti and fund-raising efforts in the U.S. Fr. Hagan, who was serving as chaplain at Princeton University, introduced the Hands Together Program to the students there and also discovered a receptive, passionate and caring adult community outside of the University's walls. Directed by the vision of Fr. Hagan and fueled by the support and resources of many good people in the Princeton area, Hands Together quickly matured and began to undertake much more ambitious and larger scale projects in Haiti. Haiti's largest water-well digging machine was purchased by Hands Together and shipped to Caritas Gonaives. The solid partnership existing between Hands Together and Caritas Gonaives flourished as we collaborated on water projects, community development and agricultural efforts, and many other educational and relief programs.
A Haiti headquarters and center for volunteers was purchased and for the first time we directly targeted the poor living in the worst neighborhoods of the Cite Soleil slum. After Fr. Tom Hagan moved to Port-au-Prince in 1997, our programs in Cite Soleil rapidly grew and Hands Together emerged as one of the leading educational and health organizations working in Haiti's largest and poorest slum.
Hands Together entered the new millennium determined to improve and broaden our programs and services to the poor living in Cite Soleil. We added many new classrooms to our four campus elementary school, nearly doubled the number of registered members at our free clinic and became one of Cite Soleil's largest employers by giving decent, service oriented jobs to over 200 residents. Through much prayer and trust in God we continued with this slow and painstaking work, our roots sinking deeper into these very troubled communities. The people living in Cite Soleil experienced and appreciated the persistence of our efforts to improve their communities and slowly began to believe that we would not abandoned them in times of adversity. This strengthening of the fragile bond between us and the desperate, frightened people living in the slum has helped us weather the storms of violence, theft, and corruption that have wreaked such havoc on this horrible area.
Hands Together has built on its volunteer programs and developed a range of projects which provide various forms of assistance to the poor and disadvantaged. Hands Together continues to involve Americans in volunteer activities, particularly through organized delegations and specialized volunteers such as doctors or builders. But as the organization grew, we evolved from a program that focused on volunteer trips to Haiti and have become an active, well established Catholic mission development program serving the very poor. Today our schools, orphanages, medical clinics, sustainable development projects, and partnerships with local leaders and communities, bring God's love and creative power into lives of thousands of suffering people. Volunteering both at home and abroad, participants in Hands Together have helped in soup kitchens, homeless shelters, hospices, clinics and orphanages. Volunteers have also assisted in small business and technological development projects.
Though most of Hands Together's work focuses on helping the poor in Haiti, there have been efforts to reach out to the poor in Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, and several American cities as well.
The organization's offices are located in Princeton, New Jersey and in Springfield, Massachusetts. In Haiti, Hands Together operates a center for operations and volunteers located in Port-au-Prince.
Hands Together's work is possible due to individual donations, program revenues, Catholic mission appeals, special events, foundation grants and the generous gifts from thousands of special friends. Thanks to the United States Catholic Missionary Cooperative plan we have been able to share our story with parishes throughout the United States and receive the bountiful blessings from thousands of people who join hands with us in our work to help God's poor.
Hands Together was incorporated in 1989 as a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization in full compliance with IRS Code Section 501(c)(3).