The Dominican Development group

     c/o DaySpring  !  P.O. Box 661  !  Ellenton, FL 34222

     tel:  941-776-1018  !  fax:  941-776-2678 ! Email: DDGStevens@aol.com

 

 

The Bishop Isaac Home for the Elderly

Dedication: July 15, 2006

 

The Home.  The Dominican Episcopal Church’s Bishop Isaac Home for the Elderly (Hogar Obispo Isaac) is part of the San José Church and School complex in Andrés/Boca Chica.  It is the first Episcopal home for the elderly in the country, and one of the few in the entire Dominican Republic.  The San José Church, School and the Bishop Isaac Home are located on less than 12 acres of land owned by the Dominican Episcopal Church. San José began as a store-front mission when Bishop Isaac celebrated its first Eucharist in March 1984.  The Home for the elderly will provide residential programming and lodging for the elderly poor, and non-residential daytime services and programs for the elderly who live nearby.

 

The Bishop Isaac Home for the Elderly will expand the services San José offers the local community and the broader Church.  When finished, the three-story main unit will provide living accommodations for up to 40 residents as well as a clinic and other activities for residents and nearby commuters who come in for the daytime programs.  The facility has 20 small, two-person rooms with individual bathrooms, a medical clinic, and a small meeting room/chapel.  The adjacent Annex with the first floor kitchen/dining room and second floor activities area and community center, now under construction, was begun last year but is currently on hold for lack of funds.  The Home will open using the small kitchen in the main building until the annex is completed.

 


 

Volunteer for Mission, Karen Carroll, has responded to the call to missionary service at Hogar Obispo Isaac.  She has nursing skills and an administrative background, and will be ideal for the job.  Karen works under the supervision of Fr. Felix Encarnación, priest in charge of the San José church and school.  The DR Diocese is currently drawing up the business plan for the facility, and hopes to open the Home July 15, 2006.  The Bishop Isaac Home has beds, mattresses, sheets, towels, curtains, and kitchen supplies for when it starts up.  However it lacks office furniture, entry furniture, tables, TVs, a microwave, and rocking chairs for the startup, and hopes mission teams can help with the fabrication of and/or the purchase of these items.

 

Background.  St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church of Richmond, Virginia has played an instrumental roll in building the Bishop Isaac Home.  St. Stephen’s teams first fell in love with mission work in the DR when in 2003 St. their teams provided the funds to complete the second floor of the school, and painted the entire school.  By March 2004, through a significant combination of St. Stephen’s and other private sources as well as, Bishop Holguín’s Missionary Fund, the Home was far enough along for the St. Stephen’s teams to paint the three story facility inside and out.  St. Stephen’s mission teams have returned every year since to provide services in the area around San José.  St. Michael’s of Charleston, South Carolina has also been involved with building and furnishing the Home, and has sent teams to work on it.

 

Andrés/Boca Chica are twin cities of 30,000 to 40,000 people on the eastern edge of Santo Domingo, a metropolitan area of over 3,000,000 persons.  Andrés/Boca Chica grew up around the Boca Chica sugar mill, which still provides a major source of employment for local residents.   The vast majority are poor and work at the sugar mill, in adjacent industrial zones, and in service jobs in Santo Domingo.  Residents and outpatients of the Bishop Isaac Home will be drawn from Andrés and Santo Domingo, as well as possibly other parts of the country.  Being from poor families they will need scholarship help to cover the costs of living in the Home.

 

Years back, Boca Chica was where the owners of the sugar mill lived, and Andrés was where the workers lived.  That socio-economic pattern continues today.  Boca Chica is now a tourist area, with people from Andrés also working in that industry.  Besides providing jobs, tourism results in many abuses such as alcoholism, prostitution, and the glaring contrast of wealth and poverty, and have now come to dominate the economic setting of Andrés/Boca Chica.