Our Inspiration

In 1968, at 56 years of age, a native Wisconsinite and widow, Mary McCormick, traveled to Bogotá, Colombia to work as a Papal volunteer among the urban poor of that city. She was guided by the principles of the beatitudes. Her mission was to last one year. A one-year commitment became twenty-six dedicated and life-affirming years. Mary's life was touched and changed by her work as she touched and changed the lives of thousands of others.

Through Mary's hard work and the dedication of many volunteers, barrios with no infrastructure have been transformed into communities with water, electricity and paved streets. An association of volunteers was formed and began offering building loans, teaching nutrition, visiting the sick and the incarcerated. In 1972 Mary started hydroponics gardening and a milk program for pregnant or lactating mothers and children up to the age of three. This program, still in existence, began two years before the Women, Infant and Child (WIC) program began in the United States.

During Mary’s tenure many US citizens traveled to Bogotá to work alongside Mary and scores of Colombians joined her as faithful volunteers. Visitors, residents and their friends personally joined Mary by financially supporting the work they witnessed. While Mary worked in Colombia she began the Asociación María in Bogotá and the Mary J. McCormick Foundation in the United States. The Asociación María offers people in Colombia a means to participate in this joy-filled work and the Mary J. McCormick Foundation offers those in the United States and other countries a way to support and stay connected to the work in Colombia.

Mary's visionary ability helped create opportunities for the mentally retarded, homeless, elderly, forgotten, medically challenged and simply poor in many areas of the country. Before leaving Colombia in 1997 due to illness, Mary trained volunteers from Colombia to manage the work she began. To this day, through support of the Mary J. McCormick Foundation Asociación and additional organizations offer many of the same needed programs.

What's New?

Pilot Project:

In 2007 the Foundation began a supportive relationship with the Sisters of the Divine Savior in Bogotá.

Project Title: The Prevention of Retardation in the Infant Population Living in Conditions of Vulnerability in the Sector of La María, Olivos 1, Soacha, Bogotá, Colombia

This program cares medically and nutritionally for forty boys and girls up to the age of 5 years suffering from malnutrition. These children come from an area located next to open sewage. Eighty percent of them live in single-parent households. The people work as garbage recyclers, earning very little, which doesn’t cover basic necessities. This project continues to serve boys and girls that have participated in another project but have not obtained normal weight and have other difficulties as a consequence of malnutrition.

What is most rewarding to members of the Foundation and those who knew Mary McCormick is that in supporting this project the Foundation has returned to her original work among the newly displaced in Colombia.

New Programming at Asociacion Maria

Other new programs include the following:

  • Health: medical check-ups, prescriptions
  • Parent Education Workshops
  • Día de la Familia (Family Day): community-building activity for families with music, art and food.

Mary on the web