PTPA FRIENDS:

We hope that you had a Blessed Christmas Season and a wonderful New Year.

Mesi Anpil & Muchas Gracias
Thank you very much for all that you do for PTPA and our Twins!

This coming year promises to be a time of growth and transformation for PTPA. We plan to do all we can to support our twin parishes in the important work they do. At the same time, we must work to form new twinning relationships. More than 200 parishes in Haiti and Latin America have reached out to PTPA to express their need and desire to be twinned with a U.S. parish. Given that only about 6% of U.S. parishes are involved in twinnings, we believe the potential to form new relationships is enormous. See the article below for how you can help by being a PTPA Ambassador. Thank you for your support in our work to enable parishes to experience the many blessings of twinning.  

In the words of Cardinal Chibly Langlois, Haiti: "The Parish Twinning Program is a blessing from God. It maintains communion, leads to sharing, provokes conversion and a change of heart and it develops mutual understanding. Through the sharing of human spiritual and material resources, both twinned communities grow together in charity."

Below you will see articles on some of the great things US Parishes are doing for their twins, on new resources and services that PTPA supports US Twins with to enable them to offer great help to help impoverished communities in Haiti and Latin America, and upcoming events.

God Bless,

David Siler,
PTPA Executive Director

St. Joseph Haiti Outreach, located in Milford, CT, is twinned with the parish of Saint Therese in Marbial, Haiti. Over the past few months the US parish has managed to send about $18k to its Haitian twin. They are providing tuition for a young girl seeking a nursing degree at Notre Dame, and they expect to expand that effort to several others. They are also in the infant stages of working with DigitalKap to expand/improve the electrical grid there.

Precious Blood Parish, located in Evansville, Indiana, is twinned with the parish of Saint Jacques le Majeur in Plaine du Nord, Haiti and is also actively engaged in a sponsorship program to help educate elementary and college/trade/sewing school aged students, and other projects. Two of the U.S. parish leaders traveled to Haiti this past November. The trip was focused on communication and interface with the pastor at St. Jacques, Fr. Jacques Henri Dubois, and their other partners in Haiti. The trip was filled with many blessings. Read a detailed report about it in their newsletter here.

PTPA Executive Director David Siler's own parish, St. Matthew the Apostle in Indianapolis, who is twinned with a parish in the Archdiocese of Cap Haitien, was blessed with a great fundraising effort this year:

We do our annual fundraiser the first weekend of December each year. We were planning to bring our pastor from Haiti to speak at all our masses, but due to the current travel restrictions, he was unable to come to Indianapolis. Instead, he recorded a brief video, simply using his iPhone, thanking our parish, and imploring our continued support. We added subtitles to the video as his English is a bit challenging to understand and we showed the 2 minute 30 second video at our 4 weekend masses. His message was very compelling, and we had a very successful fundraising weekend as a result.  

If you are interested in seeing the video and possibly doing something similar at your parish, click the button below.

If you have a fundraising idea to share, please let us know and we will feature it in an upcoming enewsletter. Click here to let us know.

Over the years the best means by which the ministry of parish twinning has spread has been the same way that the Gospel itself has been spread – by current believers.  PTPA is calling on all of you – our parish twinning community – to engage in your communities to spread the good news about parish twining.

Hardly a week goes by that we don’t hear from a pastor from a parish in Haiti or Latin America, pleading for help to find a U.S. parish to join with them in solidarity as a twin parish. The demand is a flowing faucet, yet the supply is nearly a trickle. We need your help to turn on the spicket to help meet the demand. You, our current parish twins, are the best ambassadors for spreading the good news.

We are asking your parish to become an ambassador by talking to friends and family who attend other Catholic parishes, inviting them to take on a parish twin. You could also ask to speak to the parish council and/or the social ministry committee (or some similar name) at parishes in your area. You might ask them to join your own parish in your ministry or to take on their own twin and offer to mentor them as they begin their journey.

We have twin requests from Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Cuba, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Guatemala.

If you have additional ideas for how we can recruit more parishes, please let me know! Or, if you need any assistance, please reach out.

Click here to share ideas or become an ambassador.

If you have topics that you would like to focus on in upcoming Zoom gatherings – topics that you would like to see and/or a topic that they (or someone else) would like to present,

or

If you have an item or story that you would like to be included in an upcoming edition of the PTPA e-newsletter, 

Click here to submit.

P4H is a great resource to help US parishes support education in their twin’s parishes: as P4H states, “Quality education is fundamental to the development and advancement of every society. We are committed to investing in the capacity of educators because Education Ends Poverty."

To achieve this goal, P4H offers several services in Haiti and throughout the world, both in person and virtual:
School Quality Assurance Program: training and equipping of Haitian educators through professional development, a 3-year intensive and engaging program packed with research-based, pedagogical practices that are sure to increase the effectiveness of teachers. 

P4H Master Class: helps to amplify impact in local and international communities by learning how to strategically design, implement and evaluate your programs for greater good. Click here to learn more.

P4H Consulting: helps achieve greater impact by helping organizations think critically and creatively about the work it does and how to make it more sustainable. Click here to learn more.

Click here to learn more about the services that P4H offers. P4H leadership will be the presenters at our February Zoom meeting.

The PTPA Membership Portal provides unlimited access to an enormous library of resources to enhance your parish twinning relationship and find answers to questions and helpful advice. Over more than 40 years, more than 300 parishes have gone on a twinning journey and have allowed for the creation of most of the resources that you will encounter on your own journey, whether you are just beginning or are a seasoned pro. The collective wisdom of many years of experience will be available to you as you come alongside your twinning colleagues from all over the United States.

           The Portal has a new table of contents to make searching easier.
         Access the Portal here, and click here to view the new table of contents!

You are invited! PTPA hosts a national conference every several years - an event that provides an opportunity for twinning members to network and share and learn about new and best practices to serve your twin parish.  

Click here for additional details about the conference,
including keynote speakers and topics, how to register with a discounted Early Bird Reservation fee,
and how to reserve a room at the Inn at a discounted room rate!

And please join the Twin Parish Poster Session - a perfect way to share your best practices with others.
Additional information to follow.

Presenter: Mr. Mendy Calixte, founder and CEO of Solargeny

Mendy was born in Petite Riviėre de Nippes, Haiti. After high school in Haiti, he was able to attend the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering. Growing up where electricity was scarce, or available at all, he had a desire to make solar energy accessible and affordable to communities worldwide, especially those like his own. Mendy has designed an all-in-one solar solution, available in a variety of power sizes, that is essentially “plug and play”, long lasting and requiring minimal maintenance. You can learn more at https://www.solargeny.com/shop.

If you’d like to learn more about Mendy and his journey to found Solargeny, click here.

Click here to REGISTER

Presenter:  P4H's Education Director, Grace Zelaya-Reyes, and Administrative Director, Kayla Courson

Read above for more information about P4H.

Click here to REGISTER

PTPA is a Catholic, non-profit organization. Our mission is to live the Gospel by seeking, promoting, and supporting the formation, growth and development of twinning relationships between Catholic parishes in the U.S. and Catholic parishes in Haiti and Latin America.

“I assure you, as often as you did it for one of my least brothers, you did it for me.” Matthew 25:40