Each year during the Christmas season, photographs depicting the work of Family Health Ministries hang in Duke Chapel.
The exhibit will open in the Chapel on Thursday, December 18, during the annual Christmas Open House and will remain in the nave through the 5th anniversary service of remembrance of the Haiti earthquake on Monday, January 12, 2015.
“During this time when we celebrate the holy infant, we also pray for mothers and children everywhere,” said Christy Lohr Sapp, the Chapel’s associate dean for religious life, and a member of the Chapel’s art committee. "May the children of Haiti be a sign for us of Christ’s love poured out for the whole world.”
The photographs depict life in and around the Blanchard Family Health Clinic in Haiti, which is run by Family Health Ministries (FHM). FHM is a nonprofit agency founded by Duke medical doctor David Walmer and his wife Kathy. FHM provides medical care and support to the people of Haiti.
In May 2004, an eleven-person group coordinated by the Congregation at Duke Chapel conducted a mission trip to Haiti. The purpose of the trip was to lay the foundation for the first and only medical clinic in the city of Blanchard. Many who now live in the community fled violence in the Cité Soleil neighborhood in Port-au-Prince. In recent years, the Nancy Ferree-Clark Guesthouse was added to the clinic and named in honor of the former Congregation pastor.
The clinic continues to grow due in great part to the generous annual offerings from the Chapel’s Christmas Eve services, this being the twelfth annual collection. These offerings provide most of the clinic’s annual operating support. Ongoing funding is crucial to continue to address the unmet needs of access to affordable healthcare, health education, and disease prevention.