Re: JustHope --- "Creating Global Partnerships, Combating Poverty, Nurturing Sustainable Community"

On this installment of ST, we welcome the founder and executive director of JustHope, which is a Tulsa-based non-governmental organization (or NGO): Leslie Penrose. She formerly worked as a church minister in our community, and she first visited Central America in 1986; about a decade later, Penrose and several colleagues decided, as we read on the JustHope website, "to create a long-term relationship with a single community in Nicaragua --- a community with whom they could wrestle and hope their way into something deeper, something truer, something more mutual; a community who rather than a charity project for them, could become a partner with them in the work of justice. Across the years the relationship grew and developed as both groups risked moving beyond paternalism to solidarity. And along the way, other groups saw what was possible and worked with Leslie to create their own partnerships of solidarity and hope. In 2007, Leslie left the pastoral ministry to pursue the work of creating and nurturing global partnerships full time." On today's ST, Penrose elaborates on how JustHope operates --- the organization's mission, by the way, involves "creating global partnerships, combating poverty, [and] nurturing sustainable community" --- and also on how and why this NGO has been able to meaningfully aid the people of Chacraseca, Nicaragua, a small, impoverished farming community just east of Leon. (You can read more about Just Hope's efforts in Chacraseca here.) Our other guest on the program is Julio Delgado, who works closely with Penrose as JustHope's Director of Operations for Nicaragua. As they tell us on today's show, JustHope will host a "Wine for Water and Hope" benefit --- to build and maintain water systems in Chacraseca and elsewhere --- this coming Thursday evening (the 7th) at the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in downtown Tulsa (with doors opening at 6pm); you'll find more information on this benefit at this link.