Pat Buckley and her husband John are changing lives

Pat Buckley, Vice President with Duffy Group, has always been about giving back. Her upbringing in a close family and strong connections to her faith instilled in her from an early age that one should “do the right thing” whether in one’s own home and community or in the larger global perspective. This desire manifested itself in a profound way when the Buckley family was visited by two boys, “pequeños” in their native language, in the fall of 2004. The boys were visiting the US as part of a group from Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos a home in Mexico and, as part of a folkloric dance troupe, were raising awareness of the charitable work of this organization. (“Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos” is Spanish for “Our Little Brothers and Sisters”. Visit their website at: www.friendsoftheorphans.org). Pat and her husband, John had been asked by a friend to sponsor the two boys for their weekend visit. The boys, both musicians, hit it off immediately with John, also a musician, even though their facility in the other’s language was very limited. Pat, on the other hand, was smitten by these two orphaned boys and, with her “Spanglish”, was able to communicate with them much better than John with his limited Spanish. By the end of the weekend, she and John had signed on as sponsors of these kids and had committed to helping support them and 600 of their brothers and sisters in the NPH home in Mexico. Fast-forward to 2011: After seven years of continuing involvement, Pat’s role with NPH and their fundraising arm, Friends for the Orphans, which began as a local volunteer organizing events around northern Arizona and evolved into a position on Friends’ Southwest Regional Board, has now expanded to that of Director on the Board of Directors of the national Friends of the Orphans organization. She has made numerous trips to the NPH homes in Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala and plans to visit the homes in Haiti and Dominican Republic in 2012. She and her husband continue to sponsor children and currently sponsor a seven year-old boy in Haiti, a 10 year-old girl in the Dominican Republic, a 16 year-old girl about to graduate from high school in Mexico and a 23 year-old boy attending university in Mexico.