Chantal is the largest town in the area with a population of approximately 3,500 people, and it is the site of the main parish church, St. Jeanne. Thousands more people live throughout the countryside, mostly working in non-mechanized agriculture. Although the parish boundary extends about 5 miles (as the crow flies) from Chantal, the extremely rugged, mountainous landscape with little to no infrastructure makes travel difficult and time consuming. What appears to be just a few miles distant on a map can take most of the day to reach.

Several chapels have been established throughout the parish to serve the people outside of Chantal as houses of prayer and community centers.

The chapels throughout the villages of the parish serve as hubs for community services in addition to being centers for Sunday worship of God. The chapels give families a place to meet when members of the mobile medical clinic come to the area. A few nurses and one doctor travel from Chantal to the chapels periodically to conduct basic health examinations and to administer medicine, a lot of which we can find readily over the counter in the United States.

This live saving medical assistance (and the pharmacy in Chantal) exists because of the twin parish support paying for the medicine and medical workers' salaries.

The sustainability efforts we try to build through our relationship wth St. Jeanne de Chantal has included animal flocks and herds. By investing in livestock that the people tend for themselves, the animals provide a perpetual source of food that also grows over time. Families given these animals enter a commitment to pass on their offspring to another family. 

Several years ago, we started with chickens, helping fund the building of coops and purchasing chickens. Not long after that, we helped many families purchase goats. Most recently, beginning in 2020, funds have gone toward acquiring cattle, creating another source of milk and meat.