The Fruit of Love
Kythoni, Inc., supplies food, water, education, shelter and health care to people in need. The name Kythoni, a nod to the heritage of founder Chuck Nomides, comes from the Greek word for quince, the fabled fruit of love, and recalls the wisdom of Mother Teresa who said,
The fruit of Silence is prayer.
The fruit of Prayer is faith.
The fruit of Faith is love.
The fruit of Love is service.
The Nomides met in college and shared a passion for humanitarian service that both discovered on church mission trips during high school. But Kathy was ready to focus on raising children in 1998 when a friend at church invited the couple to lead a group to the Philippines ahead of a home-building visit by Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity. “We took 13 people on that trip,” Kathy recalls. Their assignment was to start building houses before former President Carter arrived. Three two-bedroom houses were completed in one week. They left before the commotion began, but never relinquished the appetite for humanitarian service.
The next aid trip brought the whole Nomides family to Papua New Guinea. “We realized how quickly children are able to adapt and build the cross-cultural relationships that are so important, quicker than the adults on the team,” Kathy says. “I also believe it is why three of our four kids are now working in the medical field and still giving aid to those in need.”
Through their church in Pennsylvania, the Nomides responded to a plea for humanitarian assistance from Marlaine Alix and her organization in Haiti, Aid International. Residents of two impoverished rural communities desperately needed medical care. Kathy, Chuck and their daughter, Jennifer, a physician trained at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where she also earned a masters in public health, assembled the resources needed for a mobile medical clinic in Marbial, Haiti.
Sustaining nonprofit initiatives in the spirit of religion and service requires more resources than a single church community can marshal. Wider support today gives Kythoni the means “to go wherever called,” the mission statement says.
In early 2017, the Marbial community invited Kythoni to turn an empty building into a permanent freestanding medical clinic. The Clinique Communautaire Planon Casse de Marbial soon opened its doors two hours by foot from the closest medical facility of any kind. Caught once during the rainy season, the Nomides can attest that rain makes Marbial inaccessible.
It costs $1,800 a month to support two full-time nurses and a lab technician who manage routine health issues from infections to obstetrics. Patients pay $1.50 per visit, which includes prescriptions and follow up. Staying open depends on charitable support from large funders and individuals whose small donations often represent substantial portions of their incomes. “People who have little are sometimes more generous than more wealthy patrons,” says Kathy Nomides.
To furnish students with sustainable sources of income, two friends of Kythoni, Helen Peloi and Caitlin Terry, with additional support from Aid International, initiated the popular “Gift a Goat” project in Marbial in 2014.
Locally purchased goats provide milk and produce baby goats — up to three a year — that can be sold, giving a boost to family income and the local economy. Enterprising Haitians can turn milk products in to cheese, soaps or lotions and goat excrement can fertilize gardens that produce most of the food that families consume.
Cars signal economic growth in the U.S. “I always judge progress in Haiti,” Kathy says, “by how many goats you see on the mountain.” A biblical analogy applies. Says Kathy, “The whole thing is teaching people to fish rather than giving them fish.”
The founders see success in lasting relationships. People who accompanied the Nomides to the Philippines support Kythoni today. Twenty years ago they sponsored a Haitian orphan who became adept at repairing electronic devices. Then he started refurbishing cell phones. Today he is a technician on music videos. “There is no way to raise enough money to meet every medical need,” Kathy says. “But build two or three good relationships and encourage them to help others, then you start to build bridges more enduring than the actual work.”
[Images courtesy of Kythoni, Inc.]