Dominican Republic
Brighton First has completed in December of 2024 – additions to both the school and the medical clinic at the Haiti border in the Dominican Republic that will expand the populations served there. We are currently working on a clean water initiative to serve the larger area for 2025-2026.
Ukraine
Brighton First is assisting local priests in the Lviv Oblast with their support of refugees and impoverished families. below are two of the four priests (in one of the priests parish church dating from a much earlier time) who help us with our mission inside the Ukraine. In 2024 we have completed two trips (March and November) bringing over $30, 000 of humanitarian aid.
Brighton First supports allied organizations in impoverished and war-torn areas including Ukraine, and Poland, The Eastern European programming began in 2003 in the rural pre-Siberian plains of Kostroma Oblast and more recently since the military conflict in the area has been transferred to the Polish Border town of Przemysl which has allowed Brighton First to aid Ukrainian refugees and assist Lviv Ukraine Hospitals with medical supplies. In March 2024, a group of volunteers with the assistance of Catholic priests and the Jesuit Order in Western Ukraine have completed two trips inside Ukraine to provide help with orphanages and schools. Currently we are providing social service support for a specialty school in Western Ukraine for children with developmental disabilities including Autism, a local nursing home which is accepting disabled refugees from the east, a service organization providing first aid and warm clothing to people in the east and behavioral help programing for youth who have been traumatized by the war. Below is the train station at the Polish Border, below that is a group of American volunteers with Ukrainian Catholic nuns who are providing hospice care and orthopedic rehabilitation while distributing good will cards done by Pennsylvania and Maine school children to cheer displaced children who are relocated to the west. The third picture is a medical hospital serving refugees at the Polish border.
Peruvian Mission
The Peruvian Mission is a current dormant program and could use both interested volunteers and funding. In 2020 – a vision quest trip was taken to establish connections to an allied social service organization in Chimbote and the nearby rural village of Pampadura, Peru. Funding was given to the Diocese of Chimbote to fund a church in Pampadura, that was completed during COVID and also money was given to the local mayor of Pampadura for a pump to provide clean water to a rural village with 43 families.
Our contact with the village was a local businessman Frank Roman, who lived nearby and owned a pickup truck. He and his lovely wife who were expecting their fourth child extended classic Peruvian hospitality to Western Pennsylvania volunteers who paid for their plane tickets and expenses to explore this new relationship.
Three months later, Frank Roman died of COVID. Rest in Peace – our dear friend. Pictures of church, community center and Frank Roman. Additionally, contacts were made through the Diocese of Chimbote with the priest in charge of the Church of Holy Martyrs who ironically was miraculously spared being murdered by the Shining Path along with one of the martyred priests when he was the altar boy.
