Nyack-based lawyer returns from trip to Ghana

By Alex Taylor • artaylor@lohud.com • August 22, 2010

http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20108220330

NYACK — Dennis Lynch is probably better known for his work as a trial attorney than for the Giving to Ghana Foundation, the nonprofit organization he helped found in 2006.

But his background as an attorney at Feerick Lynch MacCartney PLLC — including a stint representing the Town of Stony Point — has helped him, Lynch said.

"Most people would probably say not," he said, laughing. "But attorneys aren't known for being afraid to do something."

The Giving to Ghana Foundation started more than three years ago as a discussion between Lynch and the Rev. Joseph Domfeh, a Roman Catholic priest from Ghana who was then an associate pastor at St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church in Nyack, where Lynch attends the daily 7 a.m. service.

The two men discussed differences between the U.S. and Ghana, which has a democratically elected government and a growing economy but remains largely rural and lacks basic needs, including clean water, health care, education and medicinal clinics.

The two men collaborated and raised money for needed boreholes — deep water wells — that provide clean and safe drinking water. That led Domfeh and Lynch, among others, to form the Giving to Ghana Foundation to serve the poor in rural Ghana by building a $250,000 medical clinic in the Catholic Diocese of Sunyani.

That was in December 2006.

Earlier this month, Lynch returned from a two-week trip to Sunyani to tour the now- opened St. Matthew's Medical Clinic with his daughter, Libby, 19, a student at the College of Charleston, in S.C., and the Rev. Rees Doughty, pastor of St. Ann's, among others.

What he saw in Ghana was both bracing and uplifting.

Life in Sunyani remains a "world apart" from life in the U.S., Lynch said, but he came back impressed by the Ghanian people.

"You have extreme material poverty and remarkable spiritual wealth," Lynch said. "It seems like the less people have, the more they seem to appreciate it.

"It was a remarkable trip," he said.

Lynch said he plans to return to Sunyani in two years, when Giving to Ghana completes work on two additional projects: expanding St. Mathew's Medical Clinic with a lab and surgery ward.

"A group of people at St. Ann's have really contributed." Lynch said. "The story is local people can help globally."