Team Hope 2025: A Week of Healing and Hope

Last week, Team Hope — our largest service trip of the year — brought together doctors, nurses, and volunteers from around the world to serve families in Guatemala. Over the course of four days, lives were transformed through access to health care, surgery, and healthier homes.

Together, we accomplished:


• 154 life-changing surgeries
• 997 patients were seen in our medical clinics
• 126 families received smoke-free stoves and clean water filters
  

Every number represents a powerful story: a mother cooking without smoke filling her home, a parent receiving long-awaited surgery, and a family finally gaining access to safe drinking water.


We are deeply grateful to every volunteer, partner, and supporter who made this possible. 

Team Hope is more than a week of service — it is proof that compassion, collaboration, and generosity can change lives. And it doesn’t just change the lives of the families we serve — it changes the lives of our volunteers, too.

Every person who joins a mission returns home with a renewed sense of purpose, a deeper connection to humanity, and the knowledge that they made a tangible impact. Whether you are a medical professional, or simply someone with a willing heart, there is a place for you on our teams.

Last week, Team Hope showed once again what is possible when people come together with compassion and purpose. Dr. Jeff captured it best in a reflection he shared with our team, reminding us that while surgeries and medicines are life-changing, so too are the quieter, everyday interventions—like clean water, safe air, and education—that save lives and shape healthier futures.

Here are his words:

The recent Project Hope trip to Guatemala was an amazing testament to great people accomplishing great things. Piece by piece, it may not seem that significant, but as a whole, it is an important and impactful body of work. It is more obvious how medicines prescribed from the clinic or surgeries in the OR can change lives. It might be harder to see the enormous impact of the education or home environment work.

Education….especially reading by 8-9 years old ….can markedly improve the long-term health of the individual. Adults learning skills that lead to better housing and nutrition have a huge impact on the family’s health. But it might be easy to overlook the life-saving work of those that provide clean water and smoke-free air for many of the poorest families in Guatemala. Worldwide and in rural Guatemala, diarrheal illness and lung problems are major killers of children. These illnesses are common all over, but if you add terrible nutrition , parasites from water, and lungs working poorly from smoke and limited access to care….instead sick for a week or two ….many die. Clean water and clean air always matter…but for those we are serving, it can help them learn and grow…or often make the ultimate difference of life and death. Your work on water filters and stoves may not seem as glamorous as clinics and surgeries, but it is a critical part of our whole package of promoting health and treating illness. The water, the air, the education, the clinics, the surgeries…. All a strong set of overlapping circles that will have an immense long-term effect on the lives of those we serve.

Your work inspires us all.

Thank You,

Jeff

Be part of a night filled with purpose and celebration!

Secure your seat at our Gala today and help us bring hope and opportunity to even more communities.

Together, we can make this our most impactful evening yet. Your presence not only adds to the celebration, but also strengthens the hope and opportunity we can bring to families who need it most.