Kimberly Kreiling of the Agros Foundation will speak at a special dinner meeting Saturday evening, April 5 at the Village Chapel to describe the organization’s vision to help rural families in Central America.

The focus of the Agros Foundation is to break the cycle of poverty for millions of the rural poor in Central America through a five-pronged approach. Because these families are unable to purchase their own land they are forced to pay exorbitant rent for land that is unproductive or to work for desperately low wages as farmhands and migrant laborers in an attempt to survive.

After the Foundation helps families purchase land, the families pay back the cost over time through the fruits of their own labors. These monies are then invested in new communities to provide assistance to other families in need. The Foundation calls their mission a “hand-up” not a “handout.”

While land acquisition is the first of the five-pronged assistance program, it is followed by a series of comprehensive steps that help develop local leadership, teach agricultural technologies and the intricacies of running a small business, promote basic health education and critical thinking, share the need for spiritual growth, and assist in building family and community infrastructures. Houses, access roads, community centers, irrigation and portable water systems, and electrical connections are just some of the community infrastructures that are created.

Bob Vetter, chairman of the Chapel’s Missions Committee said interest in Central America by the church-at-large is crucial. “We continue to be very concerned about the less fortunate in this country but the stark reality is that many people live in abject poverty in Central America with no support system such as government welfare, water, sewage, medical clinics and an opportunity to earn a living.

“The average rural farmer in Central America has an annual income of less than a one month’s welfare check in the United States and that is without food stamps, Medicaid and other government services,” he said. “The plight of these farmers is almost beyond our comprehension.”

Agros supports 15 developing communities in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Since 1982 its efforts have equipped over 2500 people to break free from poverty.

Kreiling is a graduate of Davidson College in North Carolina and earned a Masters of Divinity Degree in Biblical Studies from Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.