Liz Sunel: Founder, DOVE Missions

By Caroline Cox

As a long-time mission trip leader and youth director for her local church in Minneapolis, Liz Sunel has seen her fair share of impoverished cities and people facing hardships. But it was a particular trip she took to the Dominican Republic’s barrios with her 12-year-old son that truly changed her life forever.

After witnessing the interaction between young American missionaries and Dominican children and the genuine happiness expressed in the midst of such poverty, Sunel knew she had to help. She created DOVE Missions in 2002 to bring supplies, build churches and provide food and education to children in places like Cristo Rey and Puerto Plata. She also aids hospitals, disabled children’s homes, orphanages and the estimated 3 million displaced Haitians illegally living in the Dominican Republic, many in sugarcane fields. Through tough times, Sunel relies on her strong belief that this is what she was put on the earth to do.

PINK: How does your organization improve the community?

Liz Sunel: Any bit of help in Haiti is monumental to the community. The bleak conditions in the Barrios we work with are located along a polluted beachfront and a riverbank. Pieces of tin put together for a one-room house with no access to water or electricity and raw sewage flowing between the houses. We’ve partnered with a Haitian priest who oversees day-to-day operations of a rental property with 20 orphan children under age six and volunteer housing. There’s a 15-acre piece of land we have just started building our complex on. It will include a school for 800 children, a medical clinic, an orphanage, vocational school and a chapel. We opened our Youth Development Center two years ago and have almost 100 children enrolled in a program to keep them off the streets through our Child Sponsorship program.

PINK: What’s been your proudest moment in your organization?

LS: The first day we opened our Youth Development Center [in the Dominican Republic]. I laid out a foam mat with stuffed animals that a group had donated. Our first class was the 10- to 14-year-old boys. Many of them had been part of a pedophilia ring or tough street kids, like shoeshine boys. They came in squealing in delight – each grabbed stuffed animals and cuddled them. We formed a circle and passed around one of the stuffed animals. When you held it, you said something you were thankful for. Each boy said something similar about how much they loved me and the club and how they thanked God everyday that we had [created] it.

PINK: What are your goals for the future?

LS: I’d like to have a piece of land in the Dominican Republic with a mission house for volunteers, our Youth Development Center and medical clinic all together. This would help facilitate our livestock programs and organic gardening projects. We also have a goal to complete our complex in Haiti complete within the next five years.