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Patrick Atkinson is a man who believes in the 'hard' values of no-nonsense efficiency and justifiable effectiveness.
As always, he puts it more directly... "Being surrounded by the poor as we are, there is too much for us to do now for us to waste any valuable resources, especially time."
And time Atkinson hasn't wasted.
As a highly educated business administrator second, and missioner dedicated to his faith and the poor first, Patrick Atkinson is the founder and executive director of several nonprofit international charities, and he sits on the boards of several non-profit and for-profit corporations.
Atkinson is in constant national demand as a low-key, highly-inspritational speaker. He is widely sought after for his presentations on health, education, and business-related matters as they relate to charities serving in developing nations.
Atkinson is most recently best known as the founder and international executive director of
The GOD'S CHILD Project, a non-profit ecumenical international charity he began in 1991.
The 11,000 poor children, young adults, and homeless families that are helped through The GOD'S CHILD Project would be more than enough for anyone, but Atkinson doesn't stop there. He is also the administrator for a specialized school that teaches mentally, intellectually, and physically challenged boys, girls, and young adults, and oversees several rural schools and three clinics for the poor and especially children of migrant workers.
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During the 1980's, when Atkinson was barely in his mid-twenties, he worked for ten years in Central America and developed networking by working with various international organizations.
During the 1980's, Atkinson was the founder of three clinics, 37 group homes, four centers for street children, and a family development center. He began homes for handicapped girls, and personally designed and supervised the construction of parks, shelters, cemeteries, and common areas for the poor.
Atkinson developed the methodology for the milestone Casa Alianza street child program in Guatemala City, which he opened in September of 1985. He subsequently founded Casa Alianza projects in Mexico City, Honduras, and Panama.
His work in Central America during the 1980’s extended beyond the borders of war-torn Guatemala and into El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Mexico, Columbia, Haiti, Vietnam, India, The Philippines, and Thailand.
In 1991, he returned to Guatemala, Central America, to found the Guatemalan charity,
La Asociación Nuestros Ahijados.During the 1990's, Atkinson designed and refined an educational methodology and approach for educating the poor in developing nations, which he calls the Bismarck Educational System (BESY). BESY has received international attention and study by developing school systems.
In 1999 and 2000, while a graduate student at Regis University in Denver, CO, Atkinson co-developed a university course model based on international service learning, and he coined the term "SOFE", meaning Service Oriented Field Experience. An intensive review and dissection of the SOFE course modality was recently authored for university level textbooks by course co-developer Elise Burton, J.D.
In 2000 and 2001, Atkinson was invited by the United Nations to develop child development and educational programs for street children left orphaned by the rampaging AIDS crisis in East and South Africa. He is presently active in this new ministry in Malawi and Tanzania.
During the past seven years, Atkinson has developed the architectural design and is overseeing the construction of a 10-acre community health, education, and development facility known as The DREAMER Center, which is located on the edge of the notorious San Felipe slums, outside of Antigua Guatemala. He has full responsibility for fund-raising for this project, as well as for project development and management.
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A family man who's love for his son Ernesto is exceeded only by his love for God, Atkinson was born and raised in Bismarck, ND.
He is certainly a man who defies categories, labels, and professions. His skills, vitality, and unqualified commitment to the poor have crossed continents and hemispheres, and have awakened tens of thousands of American citizens to the plight of the developing world’s poor.
Midway through college, in 1981 he accepted an extended Social Work internship in New York City’s dangerous Hell’s Kitchen district, where he worked with street gangs, prostitutes, the homeless, and drug addicts.
Graduating Magna Cum Laude from Minnesota State University Moorhead, Atkinson refused several lucrative corporate job offers to work with the homeless and the disadvantaged.
He has a Masters in Nonprofit Management from Regis University in Denver, Colorado, where he is adjunct faculty. He is currently working on his PhD in Organizational Management.
Atkinson is an active speaker across the United States, and has been interviewed for CNN, The Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, San Diego Union Tribune, Chicago Tribune, NBC, Telemundo, Public Radio, and numerous national and regional print and broadcast media outlets.
He is the holder of various patents and patents-pending, and the recipient of nearly 100 national and international health, education, and human rights awards.
At the request of the Guatemalan government, local business, and individuals who are homeless, Atkinson recently accepted the responsibilities to fundraise for, build, and design the program methodology for the
Santa Madre Homeless Shelter of Antigua Guatemala.
He has paid a heavy price for his commitment to the poor. In the past 20 years he has been mugged on the streets of New York City, blasted from his bed in a car bomb explosion in El Salvador, shot at in Guatemala, twice knifed, and had his hand crushed and broken in Eastern Africa. He has been ill with malaria on four different occasions and hepatitis twice. He has contracted countless infections with parasites and tropical diseases.
He has been on a US Embassy-recommended safety watch after pursuing the investigation of a clandestine cemetery that he discovered, and again after directing the prosecution of a violent street gang in Guatemala.
He very recently founded The Crying Hill Foundation to protect from imminent urban development land that for centuries had been sacred to North Dakota's Native American population.
Ironically, Atkinson says that there is nothing special about what he does.
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Biography based on combined comments from United States Congressman Earl Pomeroy, North Dakota First Lady Mikey Hoeven, Fr. Patrick Schumacher, and an introduction of Mr. Atkinson to the University of Rochester (NY) Medical School.
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