Village of peace honors son, brother, friend

COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (June 8, 2012) – Yeshai Fields was a young man of principle. His family and friends say he was a man who lived with the goal of helping people from all walks of life. So when they lost him in his late 20s, they turned to the international relief and development agency Food For The Poor to help create a memorial to him that would be a reminder of his magical smile and loving ways. This memorial was building a Village of Peace in Nicaragua.

Yeshai Fields

That village in San Agustin, Quezalguaque, Nicaragua, currently is a community of 300 people who live in extreme poverty, battling daily against hunger, disease and the rodents that share the garbage-strewn landscape. It is this community that his family has chosen to transform with homes, water wells, livestock, crops and a community center with a medical clinic.

They are more than halfway to their goal of making it a reality through several fundraisers held by family and friends. The Yeshai Fields Village of Peace will be dedicated this fall.

“The memory of Yeshai Fields will live on. Yeshai always dreamed of providing for the underprivileged. May this tribute and our generosity be in honor of Yeshai’s relentless vision to help bring happiness to others,” his family wrote in an appeal to friends. 

His mother, Nava Fields, said the most important thing in Yeshai’s life was to be generous, and that he was especially compassionate toward the homeless and tried to help them. “He did it because he felt it was the right thing to do, and he wanted to do more. He would always say,’I will make you proud of me,’ and this is one way that I can show him how very proud I was of him,” she said.

Born in Israel in 1982, Yeshai was the younger of twin boys, and was raised on a sheep farm until the age of 5, when his family immigrated to Coral Springs, Fla. When he died, he had graduated from University of Miami’s Law School and was looking for a position as a public defender, with the goal of helping people less fortunate than himself.

“We are so deeply grateful that Yeshai’s family reached out from their grief to create such a beautiful memorial to this amazing young man,” said Angel Aloma, Executive Director of Food For The Poor.  Speaking at a gathering of his friends and family, Aloma went on to say, “You’re beautiful because you came here tonight to really save lives. And that was important to Yeshai, and I thank you for continuing his legacy. From his passing will come new life.”

There will be 24 two-room homes in the village, providing safety and dignity to people who have known only the fragile shelter of plastic, some sticks and, perhaps, some tin. The mission of the group is to develop a self-sustaining village that will be able to take care of its own needs, and provide a life-transforming environment that will reflect Yeshai’s spirit of love and camaraderie.

“We always wanted to help people, and we traveled for a couple of years in developing countries where we got insight into what poverty really is,” said Nadav Fields, Yeshai’s twin brother. “We would take our shirts off our back, and give them whatever we had. This project fits everything my brother and I worked to do, and it is exactly how he would want us to remember him.”

Those interested in helping bring this dream to fruition can visit FoodForThePoor.org/yeshai to make a donation to the project. Checks also can be mailed to Food For The Poor, 6401 Lyons Road, Coconut Creek, Fla., 33073, using the source code 83407 in the memo field.

Food For The Poor, named by The Chronicle of Philanthropy as the largest international relief and development organization in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 96 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor.  For more information, please visit www.FoodForThePoor.org.

Contact:
Kathy Skipper
Director of Public Relations
954-427-2222 x 6614
kathys@foodforthepoor.org