Hands in Service Ministries is a broad based human needs organization that works to alleviate hunger, thirst, illness, poverty, lack of purpose and to improve quality of life for persons in need both nationally and internationally.
Many teams of good-will, compassionate people work together to accomplish our work, including the Mexico-Americano Hospital in Guadalajara, elected leaders, faith group volunteers, and supportive volunteers from the United States.
At the Jalisco State Governor’s request, our first program was to partner with them to fit glasses and to invite medical specialists to see patients inside the State prisons on a weekly basis as part of their response to major destructive riots.
This program grew to include cardiologists, orthopedic surgeons, optometrists, ophthalmologists, pediatricians, gynecologists, dermatologists and others. An architect in our network also helped design a hospital that was built inside the prison. We then were able to find donated medical equipment to help outfit it.
A major Mexican non-profit asked Manos Hermanas to help them move a donation of recycled computer paper they had received some years previously. They had more than enough to fill a large bedroom to the ceiling, but needed the space and had not been able to move it.
We contacted a community development committee in a sprawling poverty belt of our city. Their children were in the local schools so they knew that the kindergartens and primary schools needed paper for the children to practice writing and drawing. The mountain of paper disappeared in a couple of weeks and everyone, especially the children, their teachers, and their parents were happy.
The other tabs illustrate our partnerships with other like-minded non-profits.
Starting in 1964, Lee Baggett, M.D., worked as a medical student with the outreach clinics of the Hospital Mexico Americano in Guadalajara, Mexico, and starting in 1974, as a physician there in Guadalajara. He helped found Manos Hermanas in 1994 as a broader based organization to meet medical and other wellness based needs in Mexico. Lee is currently President of Manos Hermanas, A.C., and Executive Director of Hands in Service Ministries.
Manos Hermanas’ initial program in 1994, at the Governor’s request, was to fit glasses and take medical specialists to see prisoners in the State prisons weekly as a part of their response to major destructive riots.
Manos Hermanas has been able to drill four deep water wells, build four arsenic removal units for clean community drinking water, import six semi-loads of food supplement for hunger relief projects, provide pure water and other help in multiple disaster relief situations, import computers to help set up school labs, provide medicines for multiple charity clinics, help improve regional goat genetics in a semidesert area, as well as many other projects. We work alongside local contacts who want to help their communities which makes the work more effective.
Besides our programs mentioned in the requests, Manos Hermanas currently is teaching ecological family garden workshops in 4 communities, reaching about 90 families. The children and the elderly are enthusiastic, as they can also help provide better health and inexpensive food for their extended families and neighbors. They enjoy being creative for their gardens, using walls, balconies, and roofs where there is no soil / space for traditional gardens.
We expanded the family gardens with an integral family farm project. We now produce quail, rabbits, and chickens in a small-footprint, vertical condominium format. The garden feeds the animals, and the animals fertilize the garden.