Jonna Knappenberger <jonna.knappenberger@gmail.com>:
*
Milot's Forgotten "Tent City"*
October 24, 2010
Originally published on Haiti Rewired
<http://haitirewired.wired.com/profiles/blogs/milots-forgotten-tent-city>
Cap-Haitien is Haiti's second largest city, and sits on the northern coast, six
hours' drive from Port-au-Prince. Ask anyone here where they would take a
sick or injured relative and they would tell you that the closest hospital
is the state-run Justinian, in the center of town. Just as likely, though,
they'll tell you that they would prefer to take a sick person to the Hôpital
Sacré-Coeur, a small, private hospital located less than one hour away in
the town of Milot.
It was this hospital that received hundreds of earthquake survivors in the
days, weeks, and months following Jan. 12. When I arrived in Cap, I kept
hearing stories about the survivors still bustling at the doors of the
Sacré-Coeur,
living in what people claimed was a huge, infested tent city overwhelming
Milot. I went to the hospital to see for myself on Oct. 9.
Sacré-Coeur, which opened its doors in 1987, is run by CRUDEM (Center for
the Rural Development of
Milot)<http://www.crudem.org/hopital-sacre-coeur/faq-2/>,
a private, non-profit Catholic organization based in Boston, Mass. A
permanent committee of five Haitian professionals runs the day-to-day
affairs, but the hospital is often host to groups of volunteer medical staff
from the U.S. The hospital at Milot has also worked in tandem with a group
of Catholic nuns since 2000.
*Responding to Disaster*
The Milot I saw was quiet and calm. I sat down with the Chief Medical
Officer, Dr. Harold Prévil and Chief Financial Officer Raymond Delnatus, who
told me that only 20 patients remained in Milot from the Port-au-Prince
earthquake, though at one point, they had served some 500.
The Sacré-Coeur started receiving earthquake survivors on Jan. 16, the first
three arriving by helicopter from the medical ship, USS Comfort. According
to Prévil, 90-95 percent of Sacré-Coeur's earthquake patients were
transferred from other
hospitals in Port-au-Prince, and even as far away as Jimaní in the DR. Upper
or lower limbs were amputated on 40-45 percent of the patients.
Prévil said that two functional operating rooms have been in continual use,
an additional third room opening for only a week. He estimated there were a
few weeks when surgery lasted from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. All amputees
were provided with prosthetic limbs, some of which came from a “prosthesis
lab” in a metal shipping container built by a doctor from Florida.
Before the earthquake, the Sacré-Coeur was a 64-bed hospital, Prévil told
me. They added 300 beds by borrowing space from a local school and by
setting up six donated tents, each holding 35-40 beds, across the street
from the main hospital campus.
Prévil insisted that the additions were not *abwi pwovizwa* (temporary
shelters) or a “tent city,” as I was told. Instead, he explained, the tents
were an extension of the hospital, treating and discharging patients.
The hospital normally charges for health services, but the care provided for
earthquake survivors was free. Upon discharge, CRUDEM provided one small
tent to each family, and the last 200 people to leave each received $100
(US) from Jesuits in Miami, Prévil said. A bus donated by the mayor of
Cap-Haitien transported the survivors back to the capital.
“It was hard for them to leave when they were discharged, but we have to
function as a hospital and not a refugee camp,” Prévil said. “We have to be
a police officer too, to carefully watch all of our supplies, because people
will take what they need.”
*An Uncountable Death Toll*
Prévil himself was a survivor of the earthquake in Port-au-Prince and
decried the lack of response to the crisis as it unfolded, something I
witnessed as well. He said he identified himself as a doctor to the Haitian
police, but was told they were not allowed to do anything.
He criticized foreign medical teams for ignoring what he called “the Haitian
context” of the disaster. He described Port-au-Prince as the scene of
rampant malpractice. Many of the triage decisions made there, he continued,
turned into infections, multiple surgeries, amputations, and unnecessary
deaths. “The death toll from a disaster can never be correct. It will always
be under-stated.”
*A Welcomed Response*
American medical teams made the work of the Sacré-Coeur possible, but the
most critical response, Prévil said, was that of the people of Milot.
Contrary to what many residents in Cap-Haitien believe, there was no
resentment among the residents of Milot. The town rallied around the wounded
– they brought food, held bedside services, and comforted the lonely.
Sister Maureen, a nun of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace, spoke of the
generosity she witnessed from the Milot townspeople. Children would arrive
with pieces of tape on their foreheads, marked with their names and ages,
many of whom were separated from parents. The Milot people adopted these
children – and all patients – with open arms.
“We saw a woman washing a girl's hair, so we asked her, 'Is that your
daughter or sister?' She replied, 'No, she's from Port-au-Prince, and I'm
from Milot.'”
One child, Sister Maureen told me, had no name, but was given a name and
almost immediately taken in by a Haitian family. A few weeks later, a doctor
from Milot, visiting Port-au-Prince, happened to find the parents of the
child, and with the help of the International Red Cross, he was transported
back to his hometown, but not without tears from the residents of Milot.
Originally from England, Sister Maureen had been in Milot for only three
months when the earthquake struck. She and Sister Ann were previously
teaching English to local children, but volunteered to sort casts and
supplies, distribute donated clothing, and keep medical records of the
patients at the hospital. She told us that other groups, such as the Vincent
de Paul Society, Jesuit Refugee Services, and Project Hope, were also
integral to the hospital's work.
*Allocating Scarce Resources*
Both Sister Maureen and Dr. Prévil described the emotional trauma of limited
supplies and life or death decisions. Prévil described a situation in March
when only one ventilator (an anesthesia machine) was available, and keeping
a severely brain-damaged patient alive. At least ten other patients were
waiting to use the same equipment, and oxygen supplies were running low.
In line with the Catholic mission, the priests, nuns, and volunteers
believed that the top priority was not letting the man on the ventilator
die. But saving this life meant putting the others at risk. In the end, the
family chose to free the ventilator for use.
“Sometimes it was life or death, and other times it was life-saving versus
limb-saving,” Sister Maureen explained. “Everyone went through such
emotional trauma.”
This experience forced the staff to reevaluate the hospital's logistics and
supplies. They later acquired new ventilators and installed a machine that
produces oxygen across the street from the hospital.
*The Next Response*
Sacré-Coeur sees 56,000 to 57,000 patients every year, 50 percent of whom
come from the Cap-Haitien metropolitan area. Since most care is primary
care, Prévil said the hospital is planning to build a nursing school and
research center in the next few years, to train nurse practitioners to
provide these basic services.
As for future disasters, Prévil says the Sacré-Coeur is prepared to
immediately receive 60 to 100 people, and that they are prepared for the
first three weeks of a disaster comparable to the earthquake.
I tried to contact Dr. Prévil yesterday, and plan on getting in touch with
him in the next few days to ask about the cholera situation
Friends of the Orphans: "Our Little Brothers and Sisters
Friends of the Orphans; Charitable Donations to Private Organizations in Haiti Critical Component to Ongoing Food Crisis Relief Efforts
28 June 2008
Obesity, Fitness & Wellness Week
(c) Copyright 2008 Obesity, Fitness & Wellness Week
2008 JUN 28 - (NewsRx.com) -- Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is no stranger to worldwide media attention as the country's agonizing food crisis continues to escalate. Violent riots and protests, the April ousting of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis and renewed pledges of aid during the early June U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Summit are well covered and debated, and headlines and photos provide a glimpse of the upheaval.
Story upon story relays the desperation of the situation, but for people like Fr. Rick Frechette, physician and Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (NPH, Spanish for "Our Little Brothers and Sisters) Haiti National Director, that desperation compels him even further to do all he can to help the thousands of children the organization serves in the region. For Frechette, turning his back is not an option, and since he arrived in Haiti 21 years ago to serve those in need, he knows how critical NPH's support is.
NPH, an organization founded in 1954 by Fr. William Wasson, operates homes for orphaned, abandoned and disadvantaged children in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries. Haiti's NPH home, St. Helene, opened in 1988 about 25 miles outside the capital of Port Au Prince. The 750 children who live there permanently or receive support from NPH are able to go to school, live in a safe environment and thrive despite the country's circumstances.
In a country of nearly nine million people, "Fr. Rick," as he is known, explained, "The problem is that most of them live on $500 per year and food is three times more expensive than it was a year ago. For many, it's nearly impossible to survive."
The price of the most basic staples, beans and rice, has risen dramatically with a 110 lb. bag of beans increasing 42.5 percent, and the same quantity of rice an astounding 82 percent in less than one year. In some homes, milk has doubled.
For Fr. Rick, reality means seeing funerals of more than 300 children per month, many of whom die from preventable things like hunger, dehydration or pneumonia. "It's really a pathetic situation and half of the children dying are under five years old. They have to have access to care and it's tragic when there's a gap between that care and available money," he said.
Because of extreme unrest in the government, the best giving strategy, Fr. Rick advises, is for donors to funnel money directly to non-profit organizations with a good track record of helping those in need. He said that in this time of chaos, aid distribution must be carefully controlled. "We really need to focus on getting aid to those who are most hungry and weak, pregnant women and those who can't fight on the food chain."
He continued, "It used to be that you could assemble a large number together to distribute aid, but given today's environment, it's now impossible because in people's desperation, we'd wind up with an uncontrollable situation. We have to manage the distribution much more discreetly."
Fr. Rick knows the challenges NPH and other organizations face in Haiti, but his philosophy is pragmatic when it comes to helping those in need and his faith has always carried him through. "Some people might look at it as a challenge to address a problem that has no immediate solution, but the most important thing we can do is keep working at it. With our help, these kids can go on to have brighter futures."
NPH does not act alone in its efforts to help children most in need. Sharon Saxelby, president of Friends of the Orphans, the non-profit "face" of NPH in the U.S., said, "We work in solidarity with Fr. Rick and all nine of our Country Directors to raise funds here in the U.S. to support the wonderful work of NPH in Latin America and the Caribbean."
Friends of the Orphans, a 50-year-old non-profit organization, provides a tax-deductible avenue for U.S. donors to support NPH, and is well aware of the ongoing challenges. "All nine of our homes are suffering from enormous increases in the cost of food and fuel and it is a crisis to which we have to devote our full attention," Saxelby said.
Throughout his decades of work on behalf of the children, Fr. Rick had a dream of expanding Haiti's NPH presence. That dream materialized when a state-of-the-art pediatric hospital, St. Damien Chateaublond, opened in 2006 in Tabarre. The facility, which includes a neighboring dental clinic, laboratory and public health clinic, provides in-patient and outpatient care to more 40,000 children and adults annually.
"We see a lot more malnourished children coming to the hospital, more desperate people coming to the gate, and the unrest and riots are putting us well beyond our budgets for the kids in our care," said Fr. Rick, who was primarily responsible for the grand vision and reality of the hospital. "But we must never turn our backs to those most in need."
And Fr. Rick explained that while the mission of NPH Haiti is to provide support and assistance specifically to the children in the home and support programs, and those who visit the hospital, the organization regularly reaches out to all residents.
"We're trying to help neighbors in three ways," he said. "We help the 400 people who work with us, 4,000 kids in the 16 street schools who need a meal a day and local kitchens that serve thousands of meals to senior citizens."
"Investing in humanity is different than investing in a project, but obviously, you still have to invest with the intent to solve it," Fr. Rick said. "There's sometimes a lack of solidarity among people, but every little bit counts, and every ounce of support we receive gets us one step closer. The children deserve all that we can do."
For more information on ways to support NPH in Haiti or any of the nine countries NPH supports, or to donate or sponsor a child in need, visithttp://www.friendsoftheorphans.org/or call 800-690-1703.
28 June 2008
Obesity, Fitness & Wellness Week
(c) Copyright 2008 Obesity, Fitness & Wellness Week
2008 JUN 28 - (NewsRx.com) -- Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is no stranger to worldwide media attention as the country's agonizing food crisis continues to escalate. Violent riots and protests, the April ousting of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis and renewed pledges of aid during the early June U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Summit are well covered and debated, and headlines and photos provide a glimpse of the upheaval.
Story upon story relays the desperation of the situation, but for people like Fr. Rick Frechette, physician and Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (NPH, Spanish for "Our Little Brothers and Sisters) Haiti National Director, that desperation compels him even further to do all he can to help the thousands of children the organization serves in the region. For Frechette, turning his back is not an option, and since he arrived in Haiti 21 years ago to serve those in need, he knows how critical NPH's support is.
NPH, an organization founded in 1954 by Fr. William Wasson, operates homes for orphaned, abandoned and disadvantaged children in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries. Haiti's NPH home, St. Helene, opened in 1988 about 25 miles outside the capital of Port Au Prince. The 750 children who live there permanently or receive support from NPH are able to go to school, live in a safe environment and thrive despite the country's circumstances.
In a country of nearly nine million people, "Fr. Rick," as he is known, explained, "The problem is that most of them live on $500 per year and food is three times more expensive than it was a year ago. For many, it's nearly impossible to survive."
The price of the most basic staples, beans and rice, has risen dramatically with a 110 lb. bag of beans increasing 42.5 percent, and the same quantity of rice an astounding 82 percent in less than one year. In some homes, milk has doubled.
For Fr. Rick, reality means seeing funerals of more than 300 children per month, many of whom die from preventable things like hunger, dehydration or pneumonia. "It's really a pathetic situation and half of the children dying are under five years old. They have to have access to care and it's tragic when there's a gap between that care and available money," he said.
Because of extreme unrest in the government, the best giving strategy, Fr. Rick advises, is for donors to funnel money directly to non-profit organizations with a good track record of helping those in need. He said that in this time of chaos, aid distribution must be carefully controlled. "We really need to focus on getting aid to those who are most hungry and weak, pregnant women and those who can't fight on the food chain."
He continued, "It used to be that you could assemble a large number together to distribute aid, but given today's environment, it's now impossible because in people's desperation, we'd wind up with an uncontrollable situation. We have to manage the distribution much more discreetly."
Fr. Rick knows the challenges NPH and other organizations face in Haiti, but his philosophy is pragmatic when it comes to helping those in need and his faith has always carried him through. "Some people might look at it as a challenge to address a problem that has no immediate solution, but the most important thing we can do is keep working at it. With our help, these kids can go on to have brighter futures."
NPH does not act alone in its efforts to help children most in need. Sharon Saxelby, president of Friends of the Orphans, the non-profit "face" of NPH in the U.S., said, "We work in solidarity with Fr. Rick and all nine of our Country Directors to raise funds here in the U.S. to support the wonderful work of NPH in Latin America and the Caribbean."
Friends of the Orphans, a 50-year-old non-profit organization, provides a tax-deductible avenue for U.S. donors to support NPH, and is well aware of the ongoing challenges. "All nine of our homes are suffering from enormous increases in the cost of food and fuel and it is a crisis to which we have to devote our full attention," Saxelby said.
Throughout his decades of work on behalf of the children, Fr. Rick had a dream of expanding Haiti's NPH presence. That dream materialized when a state-of-the-art pediatric hospital, St. Damien Chateaublond, opened in 2006 in Tabarre. The facility, which includes a neighboring dental clinic, laboratory and public health clinic, provides in-patient and outpatient care to more 40,000 children and adults annually.
"We see a lot more malnourished children coming to the hospital, more desperate people coming to the gate, and the unrest and riots are putting us well beyond our budgets for the kids in our care," said Fr. Rick, who was primarily responsible for the grand vision and reality of the hospital. "But we must never turn our backs to those most in need."
And Fr. Rick explained that while the mission of NPH Haiti is to provide support and assistance specifically to the children in the home and support programs, and those who visit the hospital, the organization regularly reaches out to all residents.
"We're trying to help neighbors in three ways," he said. "We help the 400 people who work with us, 4,000 kids in the 16 street schools who need a meal a day and local kitchens that serve thousands of meals to senior citizens."
"Investing in humanity is different than investing in a project, but obviously, you still have to invest with the intent to solve it," Fr. Rick said. "There's sometimes a lack of solidarity among people, but every little bit counts, and every ounce of support we receive gets us one step closer. The children deserve all that we can do."
For more information on ways to support NPH in Haiti or any of the nine countries NPH supports, or to donate or sponsor a child in need, visithttp://www.friendsoftheorphans.org/or call 800-690-1703.
Mainers make a difference in Haiti
Mainers make a difference in Haiti ; Visits to the impoverished island nation convince volunteers to offer their skills, time and money.
16 June 2008
Portland Press Herald
© 2008 Portland Press Herald. All Rights Reserved.
Lorraine Mitchell wasn't prepared for what she saw when she traveled to poverty-stricken Haiti five years ago with a plane loaded with volunteers.
"I knew what poor was, but I never really knew what poverty meant," the resident of Strong said. "People have to endure living conditions that I'm not sure an animal should live in."
Several years ago, Mitchell listened to a presentation by Jamie Charles, a New Vineyard volunteer for the His Hands for Haiti organization.
"I sent the $80 donation to sponsor a little girl, which paid her year's tuition, bought her a school uniform and paid for her school lunch every day," the 70-year old grandmother said.
Charles sent her a picture of a little girl in a bright uniform.
When Charles asked her to go to Haiti, she decided to take the chance. A chartered plane and bus took them to the most impoverished rural parts of the island country, where many children do not live to see their fifth birthday.
"It was hard for me to come back and see all that I have here and how much I took my life for granted," she said. "I looked around my house and saw this so differently after that trip."
Extreme poverty in Haiti is nothing new. The nation remains among the poorest in the Western Hemisphere and was designated the world's third hungriest nation by the United Nations in 2000, after Somalia and Afghanistan.
Churches, organizations and individuals from western and central Maine chose to act directly, bypassing foundations and red tape.
Clinton resident Mary Russell, a nurse and member of the Faith Evangelical Free Church in Waterville, worked in a clinic on her first trip to Haiti in 2007, but she said she spent most of her time staring in disbelief at the horrendous living conditions she saw everywhere.
"I learned that a local mission brings 13 people to a church three times a week for a hot meal," she said. "Imagine that you would get to eat only three times a week!"
She didn't plan to return to Haiti, but Charles asked her to help with the school sponsorship program.
"I prayed about that, because Jamie was so desperate for the help, and I went," she said.
On that trip, she met Cap Hatien missionary Pat Moore, who asked for donations of Croc-style plastic shoes as basic footwear. Children can't go to school without shoes, Moore explained.
When Russell returned to Maine, she bought 13 pairs of shoes and shared her plans with her church. Within two months, she had collected 400 pairs for children and adults. She traveled with her daughter Valerie McFarland to Haiti in May and again in December.
"On this trip, I was completely immersed in the Haitian culture, something that could not have been planned or scripted, but just was, and it was a wonderful experience," she said. "For one week, we saw only Haitians and learned to speak a fair amount of Creole."
Her goal is to return in December with 1,000 pair of shoes.
Allan Stanford was the first team leader for many of the dedicated volunteers who return annually. Charles gives him the most credit for pulling groups together and expanding the different programs.
"He really keeps us all going," she said. "He's inspirational."
Aaron Shorey, the Hope for Haitians Foundation director, said he plans to move to Haiti with his wife and three children to become part of a support team, finding translators and moving the groups of volunteers to areas of greatest need.
HOW TO HELP
The Maine Haiti Network enables churches, groups and individuals to share their skills, services and experiences. Contacts for several groups in Maine: * His Hands for Haiti: Jamie Charles, 652- 2911
* Maine Haitian Ministries: Pam Brochu, 990-1410
* Faith Evangelical Free Church: Haiti missions, 873-1667
16 June 2008
Portland Press Herald
© 2008 Portland Press Herald. All Rights Reserved.
Lorraine Mitchell wasn't prepared for what she saw when she traveled to poverty-stricken Haiti five years ago with a plane loaded with volunteers.
"I knew what poor was, but I never really knew what poverty meant," the resident of Strong said. "People have to endure living conditions that I'm not sure an animal should live in."
Several years ago, Mitchell listened to a presentation by Jamie Charles, a New Vineyard volunteer for the His Hands for Haiti organization.
"I sent the $80 donation to sponsor a little girl, which paid her year's tuition, bought her a school uniform and paid for her school lunch every day," the 70-year old grandmother said.
Charles sent her a picture of a little girl in a bright uniform.
When Charles asked her to go to Haiti, she decided to take the chance. A chartered plane and bus took them to the most impoverished rural parts of the island country, where many children do not live to see their fifth birthday.
"It was hard for me to come back and see all that I have here and how much I took my life for granted," she said. "I looked around my house and saw this so differently after that trip."
Extreme poverty in Haiti is nothing new. The nation remains among the poorest in the Western Hemisphere and was designated the world's third hungriest nation by the United Nations in 2000, after Somalia and Afghanistan.
Churches, organizations and individuals from western and central Maine chose to act directly, bypassing foundations and red tape.
Clinton resident Mary Russell, a nurse and member of the Faith Evangelical Free Church in Waterville, worked in a clinic on her first trip to Haiti in 2007, but she said she spent most of her time staring in disbelief at the horrendous living conditions she saw everywhere.
"I learned that a local mission brings 13 people to a church three times a week for a hot meal," she said. "Imagine that you would get to eat only three times a week!"
She didn't plan to return to Haiti, but Charles asked her to help with the school sponsorship program.
"I prayed about that, because Jamie was so desperate for the help, and I went," she said.
On that trip, she met Cap Hatien missionary Pat Moore, who asked for donations of Croc-style plastic shoes as basic footwear. Children can't go to school without shoes, Moore explained.
When Russell returned to Maine, she bought 13 pairs of shoes and shared her plans with her church. Within two months, she had collected 400 pairs for children and adults. She traveled with her daughter Valerie McFarland to Haiti in May and again in December.
"On this trip, I was completely immersed in the Haitian culture, something that could not have been planned or scripted, but just was, and it was a wonderful experience," she said. "For one week, we saw only Haitians and learned to speak a fair amount of Creole."
Her goal is to return in December with 1,000 pair of shoes.
Allan Stanford was the first team leader for many of the dedicated volunteers who return annually. Charles gives him the most credit for pulling groups together and expanding the different programs.
"He really keeps us all going," she said. "He's inspirational."
Aaron Shorey, the Hope for Haitians Foundation director, said he plans to move to Haiti with his wife and three children to become part of a support team, finding translators and moving the groups of volunteers to areas of greatest need.
HOW TO HELP
The Maine Haiti Network enables churches, groups and individuals to share their skills, services and experiences. Contacts for several groups in Maine: * His Hands for Haiti: Jamie Charles, 652- 2911
* Maine Haitian Ministries: Pam Brochu, 990-1410
* Faith Evangelical Free Church: Haiti missions, 873-1667
Healing in Haiti
Healing in Haiti
JOHN A. TORRES
9 June 2008
Florida Today
(c) Copyright 2008, Florida Today. All Rights Reserved.
JOHN A. TORRES
FLORIDA TODAY
BON REPOS, HAITI -- As Dr. Stephen Badolato listened to 6-month-old Thomas Jubiter's heartbeat, he asked the boy's mother if she had any questions.
"Can you find someone who will adopt my baby?" she said in Creole.
Badolato, a Melbourne physician, leaned back and gave her and the 15-pound baby a sad smile.
The mother and the child have AIDS.
"I know I'm going to die," the 30-year-old mother said through an interpreter. "I only came here to try and get my baby adopted. I pray about it."
Badolato was part of small medical mission team that spent four days in Haiti treating more than 100 women and children in a village about 10 miles north of the capital, Port-au-Prince. He and the others returned Sunday.
The group stayed at Ruuska Village, a haven for women who have been victims of domestic violence or abandoned by the fathers of their children. With no means to care for them, many of the mothers seek to have their children adopted by Americans.
Recent violence in the capital of this small nation -- with an estimated population of less than 9 million -- has been spurred by food shortages and debilitating inflation. During the weekend, it gave way to peaceful demonstrations.
But there also is growing resentment toward the U.N. forces patrolling the streets.
All was quiet in Ruuska Village, save for the clamoring of women and small children waiting for medical treatment. As children shared bags of cheese-flavored snacks and tried to stay cool in the intense heat, the women lined up with coughs, stomach pains, toothaches, yeast infections and AIDS.
"Back in the states, there would be a lot of options for a baby like this," said Badolato, shaking his head amid the backdrop of breathtaking mountains and cries of hunger. "The mother is sick with AIDS as well, and all she cares about is finding a place for her child. She's suffering, too. I thought that was pretty unselfish of her."
Longtime aid worker Barbara Walker started Ruuska Village years ago after receiving a $10,000 gift from an American couple she helped with an adoption.
"Many have no one to help them. That's why the babies come to me almost dead," said Walker, who has braved kidnapping attempts, shootings and widespread violence to continue caring for these women.
Refusing assistance
The medical team met its first challenge only hours after leaving Indialantic at 2 a.m. Thursday to fly from Fort Lauderdale. Spirit Airlines initially denied team members from taking a second bag. This would have forced them to leave behind the thousands of dollars in donated medical supplies, baby formula, diapers and feminine products.
However, $321 later, the bags were allowed.
Hours after landing, doctors saw their first patients.
Even with interpreters eager to lend their skills, the language barrier was almost as tough as the social barriers for the medical team.
One woman, who was being seen for irregular bleeding, refused to talk about the situation with Dr. Lance Maki of Merritt Island even though he has been an obstetrician for 20 years.
"She wouldn't discuss it with me," said Maki, who was accompanied on the mission by his wife, Kris Maki, a women's health nurse practitioner. "She's going to come back with her husband. We'll be here."
Maki then enlisted the services of an interpreter to write down some simple medical terms phonetically in Creole. Soon he was walking around with the piece of paper, asking women when they had their last periods, whether they were pregnant and where the pain was.
Kris Maki, a nurse for 20 years, said she found her first missionary experience eye-opening and satisfying.
"When my husband asked me to come, I realized at this time in my life, there was absolutely no reason, no excuse to say 'no,' " she said.
Badolato's aunt, Lisa Bahary, a nurse from Sarasota, was on the mission as well.
'All you could do'
The four medical workers grew quiet when the Rev. Tony Cortesi of a nearby orphanage showed up with two children who had severe disabilities and needed attention.
One, 4-year-old Peterson, was left with Cortesi two years ago.
"The hospital threw him out because he wasn't dying fast enough," Cortesi said of the boy who was blind and whose head was three times the normal size. "He's been living with me for the last two years. I only take the abandoned and the dying."
Badolato was amazed at how much the boy's head weighed. An infected shunt put in years ago was slowly killing the boy.
"It was shocking, devastating and gave me a feeling of helplessness," Badolato said after treating the boy. "I changed his bandages and prayed for him. That's all you could do."
Knowing the medical clinic would hardly cause a ripple in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country, Badolato thought the medical care he provided was only part of what he had to offer.
"I really wanted to help those who needed it the most," he said. "We need to make sure they are not forgotten."
Contact Torres at 242-3649 or jtorres@floridatoday.com.
_______________________________________________
Who was involved?
--- The medical team that traveled to Haiti was made up of Dr. Stephen Badolato of Melbourne; Lisa Bahary, a nurse from Sarasota; Dr. Lance Maki of Merritt Island; and Kris Maki, a women's health nurse practitioner.
--- Also with the team were Titusville missionary Joe Hurston and water purifier technician Joe Prussel of Suntree. The pair spent the weekend doing maintenance work on more than a dozen Vortex Voyagers donated by Orlando hotelier Harris Rosen. Hurston is president of Air Mobile Ministries, which has taken water purifiers and other supplies to impoverished and disaster-stricken locations worldwide.
--- FLORIDA TODAY reporter John A. Torres and photographer Craig Rubadoux accompanied the missionaries and helped. Torres' wife, Jennifer Torres of Indialantic, and son Danny of Satellite Beach, were part of the mission support team.
_______________________________________________
How to help
For information about Air Mobile Ministries, call 567-0332 or find a link to its Web site at floridatoday.com
JOHN A. TORRES
9 June 2008
Florida Today
(c) Copyright 2008, Florida Today. All Rights Reserved.
JOHN A. TORRES
FLORIDA TODAY
BON REPOS, HAITI -- As Dr. Stephen Badolato listened to 6-month-old Thomas Jubiter's heartbeat, he asked the boy's mother if she had any questions.
"Can you find someone who will adopt my baby?" she said in Creole.
Badolato, a Melbourne physician, leaned back and gave her and the 15-pound baby a sad smile.
The mother and the child have AIDS.
"I know I'm going to die," the 30-year-old mother said through an interpreter. "I only came here to try and get my baby adopted. I pray about it."
Badolato was part of small medical mission team that spent four days in Haiti treating more than 100 women and children in a village about 10 miles north of the capital, Port-au-Prince. He and the others returned Sunday.
The group stayed at Ruuska Village, a haven for women who have been victims of domestic violence or abandoned by the fathers of their children. With no means to care for them, many of the mothers seek to have their children adopted by Americans.
Recent violence in the capital of this small nation -- with an estimated population of less than 9 million -- has been spurred by food shortages and debilitating inflation. During the weekend, it gave way to peaceful demonstrations.
But there also is growing resentment toward the U.N. forces patrolling the streets.
All was quiet in Ruuska Village, save for the clamoring of women and small children waiting for medical treatment. As children shared bags of cheese-flavored snacks and tried to stay cool in the intense heat, the women lined up with coughs, stomach pains, toothaches, yeast infections and AIDS.
"Back in the states, there would be a lot of options for a baby like this," said Badolato, shaking his head amid the backdrop of breathtaking mountains and cries of hunger. "The mother is sick with AIDS as well, and all she cares about is finding a place for her child. She's suffering, too. I thought that was pretty unselfish of her."
Longtime aid worker Barbara Walker started Ruuska Village years ago after receiving a $10,000 gift from an American couple she helped with an adoption.
"Many have no one to help them. That's why the babies come to me almost dead," said Walker, who has braved kidnapping attempts, shootings and widespread violence to continue caring for these women.
Refusing assistance
The medical team met its first challenge only hours after leaving Indialantic at 2 a.m. Thursday to fly from Fort Lauderdale. Spirit Airlines initially denied team members from taking a second bag. This would have forced them to leave behind the thousands of dollars in donated medical supplies, baby formula, diapers and feminine products.
However, $321 later, the bags were allowed.
Hours after landing, doctors saw their first patients.
Even with interpreters eager to lend their skills, the language barrier was almost as tough as the social barriers for the medical team.
One woman, who was being seen for irregular bleeding, refused to talk about the situation with Dr. Lance Maki of Merritt Island even though he has been an obstetrician for 20 years.
"She wouldn't discuss it with me," said Maki, who was accompanied on the mission by his wife, Kris Maki, a women's health nurse practitioner. "She's going to come back with her husband. We'll be here."
Maki then enlisted the services of an interpreter to write down some simple medical terms phonetically in Creole. Soon he was walking around with the piece of paper, asking women when they had their last periods, whether they were pregnant and where the pain was.
Kris Maki, a nurse for 20 years, said she found her first missionary experience eye-opening and satisfying.
"When my husband asked me to come, I realized at this time in my life, there was absolutely no reason, no excuse to say 'no,' " she said.
Badolato's aunt, Lisa Bahary, a nurse from Sarasota, was on the mission as well.
'All you could do'
The four medical workers grew quiet when the Rev. Tony Cortesi of a nearby orphanage showed up with two children who had severe disabilities and needed attention.
One, 4-year-old Peterson, was left with Cortesi two years ago.
"The hospital threw him out because he wasn't dying fast enough," Cortesi said of the boy who was blind and whose head was three times the normal size. "He's been living with me for the last two years. I only take the abandoned and the dying."
Badolato was amazed at how much the boy's head weighed. An infected shunt put in years ago was slowly killing the boy.
"It was shocking, devastating and gave me a feeling of helplessness," Badolato said after treating the boy. "I changed his bandages and prayed for him. That's all you could do."
Knowing the medical clinic would hardly cause a ripple in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country, Badolato thought the medical care he provided was only part of what he had to offer.
"I really wanted to help those who needed it the most," he said. "We need to make sure they are not forgotten."
Contact Torres at 242-3649 or jtorres@floridatoday.com.
_______________________________________________
Who was involved?
--- The medical team that traveled to Haiti was made up of Dr. Stephen Badolato of Melbourne; Lisa Bahary, a nurse from Sarasota; Dr. Lance Maki of Merritt Island; and Kris Maki, a women's health nurse practitioner.
--- Also with the team were Titusville missionary Joe Hurston and water purifier technician Joe Prussel of Suntree. The pair spent the weekend doing maintenance work on more than a dozen Vortex Voyagers donated by Orlando hotelier Harris Rosen. Hurston is president of Air Mobile Ministries, which has taken water purifiers and other supplies to impoverished and disaster-stricken locations worldwide.
--- FLORIDA TODAY reporter John A. Torres and photographer Craig Rubadoux accompanied the missionaries and helped. Torres' wife, Jennifer Torres of Indialantic, and son Danny of Satellite Beach, were part of the mission support team.
_______________________________________________
How to help
For information about Air Mobile Ministries, call 567-0332 or find a link to its Web site at floridatoday.com
Our Little Brothers and Sisters
Charitable Donations to Private Organizations in Haiti Critical Component to Ongoing Food Crisis Relief Efforts; Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos supports thousands in need and serves important role in community
9 June 2008
Copyright ? 2008 PR Newswire Association LLC. All Rights Reserved.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill., June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is no stranger to worldwide media attention as the country's agonizing food crisis continues to escalate. Violent riots and protests, the April ousting of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis and renewed pledges of aid during the early June U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Summit are well covered and debated, and headlines and photos provide a glimpse of the upheaval.
Story upon story relays the desperation of the situation, but for people like Fr. Rick Frechette, physician and Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (NPH, Spanish for "Our Little Brothers and Sisters) Haiti National Director, that desperation compels him even further to do all he can to help the thousands of children the organization serves in the region. For Frechette, turning his back is not an option, and since he arrived in Haiti 21 years ago to serve those in need, he knows how critical NPH's support is.
NPH, an organization founded in 1954 by Fr. William Wasson, operates homes for orphaned, abandoned and disadvantaged children in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries. Haiti's NPH home, St. Helene, opened in 1988 about 25 miles outside the capital of Port Au Prince. The 750 children who live there permanently or receive support from NPH are able to go to school, live in a safe environment and thrive despite the country's circumstances.
In a country of nearly nine million people, "Fr. Rick," as he is known, explained, "The problem is that most of them live on $500 per year and food is three times more expensive than it was a year ago. For many, it's nearly impossible to survive."
The price of the most basic staples, beans and rice, has risen dramatically with a 110 lb. bag of beans increasing 42.5 percent, and the same quantity of rice an astounding 82 percent in less than one year. In some homes, milk has doubled.
For Fr. Rick, reality means seeing funerals of more than 300 children per month, many of whom die from preventable things like hunger, dehydration or pneumonia. "It's really a pathetic situation and half of the children dying are under five years old. They have to have access to care and it's tragic when there's a gap between that care and available money," he said.
Because of extreme unrest in the government, the best giving strategy, Fr. Rick advises, is for donors to funnel money directly to non-profit organizations with a good track record of helping those in need. He said that in this time of chaos, aid distribution must be carefully controlled. "We really need to focus on getting aid to those who are most hungry and weak, pregnant women and those who can't fight on the food chain."
He continued, "It used to be that you could assemble a large number together to distribute aid, but given today's environment, it's now impossible because in people's desperation, we'd wind up with an uncontrollable situation. We have to manage the distribution much more discreetly."
Fr. Rick knows the challenges NPH and other organizations face in Haiti, but his philosophy is pragmatic when it comes to helping those in need and his faith has always carried him through. "Some people might look at it as a challenge to address a problem that has no immediate solution, but the most important thing we can do is keep working at it. With our help, these kids can go on to have brighter futures."
NPH does not act alone in its efforts to help children most in need. Sharon Saxelby, president of Friends of the Orphans, the non-profit "face" of NPH in the U.S., said, "We work in solidarity with Fr. Rick and all nine of our Country Directors to raise funds here in the U.S. to support the wonderful work of NPH in Latin America and the Caribbean."
Friends of the Orphans, a 50-year-old non-profit organization, provides a tax-deductible avenue for U.S. donors to support NPH, and is well aware of the ongoing challenges. "All nine of our homes are suffering from enormous increases in the cost of food and fuel and it is a crisis to which we have to devote our full attention," Saxelby said.
Throughout his decades of work on behalf of the children, Fr. Rick had a dream of expanding Haiti's NPH presence. That dream materialized when a state-of-the-art pediatric hospital, St. Damien Chateaublond, opened in 2006 in Tabarre. The facility, which includes a neighboring dental clinic, laboratory and public health clinic, provides in-patient and outpatient care to more 40,000 children and adults annually.
"We see a lot more malnourished children coming to the hospital, more desperate people coming to the gate, and the unrest and riots are putting us well beyond our budgets for the kids in our care," said Fr. Rick, who was primarily responsible for the grand vision and reality of the hospital. "But we must never turn our backs to those most in need."
And Fr. Rick explained that while the mission of NPH Haiti is to provide support and assistance specifically to the children in the home and support programs, and those who visit the hospital, the organization regularly reaches out to all residents.
"We're trying to help neighbors in three ways," he said. "We help the 400 people who work with us, 4,000 kids in the 16 street schools who need a meal a day and local kitchens that serve thousands of meals to senior citizens."
"Investing in humanity is different than investing in a project, but obviously, you still have to invest with the intent to solve it," Fr. Rick said. "There's sometimes a lack of solidarity among people, but every little bit counts, and every ounce of support we receive gets us one step closer. The children deserve all that we can do."
For more information on ways to support NPH in Haiti or any of the nine countries NPH supports, or to donate or sponsor a child in need, visithttp://www.friendsoftheorphans.org or call 800-690-1703.
9 June 2008
Copyright ? 2008 PR Newswire Association LLC. All Rights Reserved.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill., June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is no stranger to worldwide media attention as the country's agonizing food crisis continues to escalate. Violent riots and protests, the April ousting of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis and renewed pledges of aid during the early June U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Summit are well covered and debated, and headlines and photos provide a glimpse of the upheaval.
Story upon story relays the desperation of the situation, but for people like Fr. Rick Frechette, physician and Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (NPH, Spanish for "Our Little Brothers and Sisters) Haiti National Director, that desperation compels him even further to do all he can to help the thousands of children the organization serves in the region. For Frechette, turning his back is not an option, and since he arrived in Haiti 21 years ago to serve those in need, he knows how critical NPH's support is.
NPH, an organization founded in 1954 by Fr. William Wasson, operates homes for orphaned, abandoned and disadvantaged children in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries. Haiti's NPH home, St. Helene, opened in 1988 about 25 miles outside the capital of Port Au Prince. The 750 children who live there permanently or receive support from NPH are able to go to school, live in a safe environment and thrive despite the country's circumstances.
In a country of nearly nine million people, "Fr. Rick," as he is known, explained, "The problem is that most of them live on $500 per year and food is three times more expensive than it was a year ago. For many, it's nearly impossible to survive."
The price of the most basic staples, beans and rice, has risen dramatically with a 110 lb. bag of beans increasing 42.5 percent, and the same quantity of rice an astounding 82 percent in less than one year. In some homes, milk has doubled.
For Fr. Rick, reality means seeing funerals of more than 300 children per month, many of whom die from preventable things like hunger, dehydration or pneumonia. "It's really a pathetic situation and half of the children dying are under five years old. They have to have access to care and it's tragic when there's a gap between that care and available money," he said.
Because of extreme unrest in the government, the best giving strategy, Fr. Rick advises, is for donors to funnel money directly to non-profit organizations with a good track record of helping those in need. He said that in this time of chaos, aid distribution must be carefully controlled. "We really need to focus on getting aid to those who are most hungry and weak, pregnant women and those who can't fight on the food chain."
He continued, "It used to be that you could assemble a large number together to distribute aid, but given today's environment, it's now impossible because in people's desperation, we'd wind up with an uncontrollable situation. We have to manage the distribution much more discreetly."
Fr. Rick knows the challenges NPH and other organizations face in Haiti, but his philosophy is pragmatic when it comes to helping those in need and his faith has always carried him through. "Some people might look at it as a challenge to address a problem that has no immediate solution, but the most important thing we can do is keep working at it. With our help, these kids can go on to have brighter futures."
NPH does not act alone in its efforts to help children most in need. Sharon Saxelby, president of Friends of the Orphans, the non-profit "face" of NPH in the U.S., said, "We work in solidarity with Fr. Rick and all nine of our Country Directors to raise funds here in the U.S. to support the wonderful work of NPH in Latin America and the Caribbean."
Friends of the Orphans, a 50-year-old non-profit organization, provides a tax-deductible avenue for U.S. donors to support NPH, and is well aware of the ongoing challenges. "All nine of our homes are suffering from enormous increases in the cost of food and fuel and it is a crisis to which we have to devote our full attention," Saxelby said.
Throughout his decades of work on behalf of the children, Fr. Rick had a dream of expanding Haiti's NPH presence. That dream materialized when a state-of-the-art pediatric hospital, St. Damien Chateaublond, opened in 2006 in Tabarre. The facility, which includes a neighboring dental clinic, laboratory and public health clinic, provides in-patient and outpatient care to more 40,000 children and adults annually.
"We see a lot more malnourished children coming to the hospital, more desperate people coming to the gate, and the unrest and riots are putting us well beyond our budgets for the kids in our care," said Fr. Rick, who was primarily responsible for the grand vision and reality of the hospital. "But we must never turn our backs to those most in need."
And Fr. Rick explained that while the mission of NPH Haiti is to provide support and assistance specifically to the children in the home and support programs, and those who visit the hospital, the organization regularly reaches out to all residents.
"We're trying to help neighbors in three ways," he said. "We help the 400 people who work with us, 4,000 kids in the 16 street schools who need a meal a day and local kitchens that serve thousands of meals to senior citizens."
"Investing in humanity is different than investing in a project, but obviously, you still have to invest with the intent to solve it," Fr. Rick said. "There's sometimes a lack of solidarity among people, but every little bit counts, and every ounce of support we receive gets us one step closer. The children deserve all that we can do."
For more information on ways to support NPH in Haiti or any of the nine countries NPH supports, or to donate or sponsor a child in need, visithttp://www.friendsoftheorphans.org or call 800-690-1703.
Parish reaffirms Haiti commitment
By Dave Peironnet
Redeemer, Kansas City
Food riots broke out in a city
only 20 miles from Redeemer’s
mission school in Haiti. Five
people died in the riots during the
second week of April.
Redeemer’s vestry voted to
“reaffirm its commitment” to St.
Thomas de Mersan school, said
the Rev. Louise Baker, rector, and
to rededicate itself to seeking
long-term solutions for problems
in the impoverished area St.
Thomas serves.
“We have made friendships
with people who live not far from
where rioting took place,” said
Kathy Peironnet, a member of the
Redeemer team that visited the
school only a few weeks before.
“These are no longer just pictures
of some distant place. These are
people we know. They are in our
hearts.”
The Rev. Colbert Estil, the
Episcopal priest who serves both
the school and church in Mersan,
immediately took action to close
not only St. Thomas but other
schools supported by the Haitian
Episcopal Learning Partnership.
In e-mail reports sent to members
of Redeemer, Colbert assured
friends in far-off Kansas City that
the schools, their students and
teacher were safe.
A friend and interpreter for the
Redeemer team, Wilfrid Mutil
even placed an overseas phone
call to give an on-the-scene update.
Inadequate food supplies
have caused malnutrition in the
past, but starvation is now a real
possibility among those in the
lowest income areas. Nonetheless,
Mutil emphasized that Episcopal
churches and schools are seen positively
by Haiti’s citizens and were
spared from violence.
St. Thomas de Mersan enjoys
strong support among families
whose children attend the school.
Test scores demonstrate a vigorous
commitment to academic
achievement, thanks to the staff
and motivated students.
However, the region is still impoverished.
Teachers reported to
Baker that many students do not
have enough to eat and oftentimes
have no food before coming to
school. As a result, students lose
attention by midmorning. A medical
team sponsored by HELP determined
that nearly all students
are at least mildly anemic.
A fear is that rising food prices
will force students to drop out of
school. Meager resources of many
families are already stretched so
that, in many cases, only a single
child in a family can go to school.
Given a choice of not eating or
giving up school, the student may
have to drop out.
Michel Gabaundan, regional
representative of the U.N. High
Commission for Refugees, told a
conference in Kansas City that this
is a rising concern. Students who
drop out of school then become
easier to “recruit for extremist
groups.”
Frank Orzechowski, an official
at Catholic Relief Services, underscored
the potential impact of food
shortages by explaining that it is a
dangerous situation that could
“spin out of control for emerging
democracies.”
Haiti’s government is its first
freely elected leadership in many
decades.
The U.S. government’s annual
conference on global food aid was
coincidentally scheduled in
Kansas City for mid-April long
before food riots broke out in Haiti
as well as many other underdeveloped
countries.
Redeemer has committed itself
to improving St. Thomas de
Mersan by adding classrooms, acquiring
books and instructional
materials and initiating a breakfast
program.
“We’re going to be part of
Haiti’s future and become part of
the solution to Haiti’s challenging
problems,” Baker said.
Redeemer, Kansas City
Food riots broke out in a city
only 20 miles from Redeemer’s
mission school in Haiti. Five
people died in the riots during the
second week of April.
Redeemer’s vestry voted to
“reaffirm its commitment” to St.
Thomas de Mersan school, said
the Rev. Louise Baker, rector, and
to rededicate itself to seeking
long-term solutions for problems
in the impoverished area St.
Thomas serves.
“We have made friendships
with people who live not far from
where rioting took place,” said
Kathy Peironnet, a member of the
Redeemer team that visited the
school only a few weeks before.
“These are no longer just pictures
of some distant place. These are
people we know. They are in our
hearts.”
The Rev. Colbert Estil, the
Episcopal priest who serves both
the school and church in Mersan,
immediately took action to close
not only St. Thomas but other
schools supported by the Haitian
Episcopal Learning Partnership.
In e-mail reports sent to members
of Redeemer, Colbert assured
friends in far-off Kansas City that
the schools, their students and
teacher were safe.
A friend and interpreter for the
Redeemer team, Wilfrid Mutil
even placed an overseas phone
call to give an on-the-scene update.
Inadequate food supplies
have caused malnutrition in the
past, but starvation is now a real
possibility among those in the
lowest income areas. Nonetheless,
Mutil emphasized that Episcopal
churches and schools are seen positively
by Haiti’s citizens and were
spared from violence.
St. Thomas de Mersan enjoys
strong support among families
whose children attend the school.
Test scores demonstrate a vigorous
commitment to academic
achievement, thanks to the staff
and motivated students.
However, the region is still impoverished.
Teachers reported to
Baker that many students do not
have enough to eat and oftentimes
have no food before coming to
school. As a result, students lose
attention by midmorning. A medical
team sponsored by HELP determined
that nearly all students
are at least mildly anemic.
A fear is that rising food prices
will force students to drop out of
school. Meager resources of many
families are already stretched so
that, in many cases, only a single
child in a family can go to school.
Given a choice of not eating or
giving up school, the student may
have to drop out.
Michel Gabaundan, regional
representative of the U.N. High
Commission for Refugees, told a
conference in Kansas City that this
is a rising concern. Students who
drop out of school then become
easier to “recruit for extremist
groups.”
Frank Orzechowski, an official
at Catholic Relief Services, underscored
the potential impact of food
shortages by explaining that it is a
dangerous situation that could
“spin out of control for emerging
democracies.”
Haiti’s government is its first
freely elected leadership in many
decades.
The U.S. government’s annual
conference on global food aid was
coincidentally scheduled in
Kansas City for mid-April long
before food riots broke out in Haiti
as well as many other underdeveloped
countries.
Redeemer has committed itself
to improving St. Thomas de
Mersan by adding classrooms, acquiring
books and instructional
materials and initiating a breakfast
program.
“We’re going to be part of
Haiti’s future and become part of
the solution to Haiti’s challenging
problems,” Baker said.
Joy and Hope of Haiti
See article below about the work of "Joy and Hope of Haiti".
====================================
Hands and hearts help Haiti; Volunteers make things -- and help make things better
Suzanne Bourret
The Hamilton Spectator
499 words
29 May 2008
The Hamilton Spectator
Final
G04
English
Copyright (c) 2008 The Hamilton Spectator.
Tables are being set this morning for the sellout crowd attending tonight's annual Joy and Hope of Haiti auction at Carmen's Banquet Centre.
Florence Couture, auction chair, says it's sold out for the first time since it started 12 years ago and that there is a waiting list.
Florence attributes the 15 per cent increase in ticket sales to Hamilton's increasing awareness of Haiti's needs. She says people are more willing to help the poorest country in the western hemisphere, where there is more than 80 per cent unemployment.
Meanwhile, volunteers are working hard to send aid, especially in light of increases in the cost of food.
Last month Joy and Hope volunteers assembled layettes for babies at Sew on Fire, a non-denominational ministry in Burlington that sews items for the needy.
Project co-ordinator Marci Schultz of Hamilton took two layettes to Cap Haitien last month. Next month, 500 baby layettes, as well as building and medical supplies, will be shipped to Cap Haitien.
Project overseer, Lena VanderHout of Flamborough, recruited volunteers from church groups and women's groups to knit and crochet baby blankets and sweater sets. They also made about 500 diapers using new and used flannel sheets.
It's part of the Birthing Kit project launched five years ago that has sent more than 100,000 kits to Haiti.
Volunteer Lea Jefferson of Ancaster says most pregnant women there lack access to quality medical care.
"The birthing kits cost less than 50 cents to make and help Haitian women to have a safe delivery," she says.
She adds that Hamilton and area has demonstrated it is a region with a big heart.
Think about this the next time you throw away a milk bag. Fran Milburn of Hamilton is using milk bags to make sleeping mats for children. "Many children sleep on dirt floors, and the mats act as a cushion," she says. "Apparently the bugs don't like the milk bags and don't come through the little holes."
It takes 200 to 250 outer milk bags to make one mat. About 1,800 mats are needed and Fran is looking for more volunteers to crochet the mats.
Fran points out the project keeps the bags from going to landfill sites.
The mats will be sent to orphanages and schools in northwest Haiti, and some already have been sent to Angola, China, Guatemala, Peru and Russia.
Call 905-389-3891 for information about donating milk bags and crocheting mats.
sbourret@thespec.com
905-526-3305
====================================
Hands and hearts help Haiti; Volunteers make things -- and help make things better
Suzanne Bourret
The Hamilton Spectator
499 words
29 May 2008
The Hamilton Spectator
Final
G04
English
Copyright (c) 2008 The Hamilton Spectator.
Tables are being set this morning for the sellout crowd attending tonight's annual Joy and Hope of Haiti auction at Carmen's Banquet Centre.
Florence Couture, auction chair, says it's sold out for the first time since it started 12 years ago and that there is a waiting list.
Florence attributes the 15 per cent increase in ticket sales to Hamilton's increasing awareness of Haiti's needs. She says people are more willing to help the poorest country in the western hemisphere, where there is more than 80 per cent unemployment.
Meanwhile, volunteers are working hard to send aid, especially in light of increases in the cost of food.
Last month Joy and Hope volunteers assembled layettes for babies at Sew on Fire, a non-denominational ministry in Burlington that sews items for the needy.
Project co-ordinator Marci Schultz of Hamilton took two layettes to Cap Haitien last month. Next month, 500 baby layettes, as well as building and medical supplies, will be shipped to Cap Haitien.
Project overseer, Lena VanderHout of Flamborough, recruited volunteers from church groups and women's groups to knit and crochet baby blankets and sweater sets. They also made about 500 diapers using new and used flannel sheets.
It's part of the Birthing Kit project launched five years ago that has sent more than 100,000 kits to Haiti.
Volunteer Lea Jefferson of Ancaster says most pregnant women there lack access to quality medical care.
"The birthing kits cost less than 50 cents to make and help Haitian women to have a safe delivery," she says.
She adds that Hamilton and area has demonstrated it is a region with a big heart.
Think about this the next time you throw away a milk bag. Fran Milburn of Hamilton is using milk bags to make sleeping mats for children. "Many children sleep on dirt floors, and the mats act as a cushion," she says. "Apparently the bugs don't like the milk bags and don't come through the little holes."
It takes 200 to 250 outer milk bags to make one mat. About 1,800 mats are needed and Fran is looking for more volunteers to crochet the mats.
Fran points out the project keeps the bags from going to landfill sites.
The mats will be sent to orphanages and schools in northwest Haiti, and some already have been sent to Angola, China, Guatemala, Peru and Russia.
Call 905-389-3891 for information about donating milk bags and crocheting mats.
sbourret@thespec.com
905-526-3305
Haiti Education Foundation
See a great article about Haiti Education Foundation below...
===========================================
A LITERATE LEGACY Arkansan builds schools in Haiti 91-year-old El Dorado woman revisits nation where she gives children hope
STORY BY HEATHER HAHN PHOTOS BY CHRIS DEAN ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
14 May 2008
The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Copyright (c) 2008 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved.
CHERIDENT, HAITI - Frances Landers climbed into the front passenger seat and braced for another bone-rattling journey.
To get from Cherident to the village of Hess, the white Isuzu truck wended up a steep, rocky track hardly wider than a hiking trail. The 20-minute ride took Landers past women with baskets balanced on their heads, wooden shacks with tin roofs, the occasional goat with its nose in the vegetation, and rows of corn and other crops terraced into the mountainside.
Finally, the truck reached its destination - a half-finished concrete building that will soon be a primary school named for her late husband, Dr. Gardner Landers, who died in 2006. The school is being built with private donations given in his memory.
For the past two days, the 91-year-old widow from El Dorado had braved three airplane flights and the harrowing drive into Haiti's remote southern mountains just for this moment.
"He would be so pleased," she said. "And then to think, there's going to be a school that's near enough for the children to belong to." This was Landers' 43rd trip to Haiti.
More than 25 years ago, while working as a medical volunteer, Landers discovered a village that had no school and vowed to change that. She launched one school, then another, then dozens more.
Today, in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, where nearly half the population is illiterate, thousands of young people are getting an education and at least one meal a day because of Landers' vision.
"It just gives the children purpose to be able to go to school," Landers said. "The kids have hope for the future. They realize that without an education, they don't have a chance to have any kind of life. They'll have an existence but not a life." Many of the children in Cherident said the rice, beans and meat they get at school are typically the only food they get each weekday. Still in a country that recently saw riots over the rising cost of rice and other staples, few students at the Haiti Education Foundation schools bear the tell-tale signs of malnourishment - discolored hair, bleached skin and swollen bellies.
Anci Fils-Aime, 31, is a graduate of the schools that Landers helped start in Cherident. With a degree in accounting from the Episcopal university in Port-au-Prince, Fils-Aime serves as the schools' treasurer.
Without Landers, he said, many of the children in rural west Haiti would be tending their family's gardens with picks and machetes or helping to sell produce in a street-side market. Like their parents, most of them would have never learned to read.
Landers is the chairman and founder of the El Dorado-based Haiti Education Foundation that provides the schools' funding. Much of the financial support comes from donations from churches across the United States, including First Presbyterian Church in El Dorado, where Landers is a longtime member.
The day-to-day operations of the schools are managed by two parishes in the Episcopal Church of Haiti.
"This is a God thing," said Susan Turbeville, the foundation's sole employee and the trip's main organizer. "A lot of people have stepped out in faith to make this happen." The new Gardner Landers School is roughly 50 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital. It is the most recent addition to the 40 primary schools and 10 secondary schools financially supported by the foundation.
Altogether, the schools had an enrollment of 11,474 students last year - more than all but five school districts in Arkansas.
HELLO AND GOODBYE
Landers traveled to Haiti in late April for the first time since 2004. At 91, she knew it would likely be her last visit.
Landers wanted to see the progress made since her last trip. She also wanted to say goodbye to a land she has grown to love.
Before she departed for Haiti, the U.S. State Department was advising Americans to defer all unnecessary travel to that country because of recent civil unrest. But for Landers, such warnings were nothing new. In her 30 years of traveling to Haiti, the unstable country has always been under some kind of travel warning for political upheaval or violence, she said.
But on this journey, Landers was not alone. She made the trip with seven other foundation supporters, including Turbeville and a son, Arkansas Circuit Judge Mike Landers. Her traveling companions came from around the United States - Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and West Virginia.
They stayed in a guesthouse built for American visitors near the schools in Cherident. By the standards of the Haitian mountains, the house offered luxurious accommodations. It had an electrical generator that powered a single fluorescent bulb in each room, indoor plumbing and toilets that worked most of the time, and, best of all, a kitchen with purified water.
As with all of her earlier trips to Haiti, Landers and her traveling companions paid for their travel out of their own pockets. She is determined that all donations, unless specifically allocated otherwise, go toward supporting the schools.
In the tiny village of Hess, dotted with mango and palm trees, about 80 children in kindergarten through second grade attend class in a one-room tin building that doubles as an Episcopal church.
Parents in the community organized the makeshift school because the nearest primary school was too far away for the youngest pupils to reach on foot. The Gardner Landers Memorial School will replace the flimsy, cramped, windowless quarters with spacious and solid classrooms.
On Landers' arrival, the teacher and the children, all dressed in neat yellow uniforms, filed out of the tin building to greet their elegant and spry Arkansas benefactor.
Landers sat nearby on a concrete ledge that's part of the new school's construction site. The children clustered around her. After the group posed for photos, the youngsters serenaded Landers in French.
"Come to school," they sang. "Don't stay in your house. Come to learn." Cerisier Bernadette, 32, the school's teacher, is a graduate of the secondary school in Cherident, named the Frances Landers Technical School.
"I loved the education I received there," she said through a translator. "That's why I am a teacher today."
BRINGING SIGHT TO THE BLIND
What first drew the Landerses to Haiti wasn't an interest in its people's education but their eyesight.
A representative from the Medical Benevolence Foundation, which supports Presbyterian hospitals and clinics around the globe, had spoken at the Landerses' church in the 1970s. He told the congregation that without the help of American doctors, most people with cataracts in Haiti would be blind for life.
That news stunned the Landerses, who knew that cataract surgery was routine throughout the United States. So, the couple volunteered to spend Thanksgiving week of 1977 helping out at Hopital Sainte Croix (Holy Cross Hospital) in the coastal city of Leogane, about 19 miles west of Port-au-Prince.
"Some of the people had walked days to the hospital, some with their blind relatives, to see whether they would be eligible for cataract surgery," Landers recalled.
"We worked a week and really thought that we would only go once, but at the end of the week we found people waiting that had not even been seen." The couple returned the week after Easter, and once again, they found the time too short to serve all those who showed up. For the next 12 years, the Landerses continued to visit Haiti twice a year around Easter and Thanksgiving.
During that time, the hospital - a joint operation of the Episcopal Church of Haiti and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) - hired as chaplain the Rev. Jean Wilfrid Albert, a graduate of the Episcopal seminary in Haiti.
Frances Landers and "Pere" - that is, "Father" - Albert became fast friends. She remembers Albert continually telling her that education was the answer to Haiti's many woes.
One day, he took her to the village of Mercery, a community where, he said, no one could read or write. At the time, most people in Mercery practiced voodoo, and the voodoo priest was the most influential man in town.
But Albert pointed to a small building that he planned to use as a church. The next year, he asked Landers for help in establishing a school inside the church building.
She appealed for assistance from the Presbytery of the Pines, the regional governing body for Presbyterian churches in southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana. A congregation in Monroe, La., learned of her efforts and donated money from its Vacation Bible School to pay a teacher's salary.
When Landers next traveled to Mercery in 1981, she saw a classroom of happy children who sang to her and presented her with flowers. Then she saw a girl ask Albert if she could go to school there too. But Albert had to tell her there was no room.
"I took her picture and took it home to my church and asked them if we could build a school where we would not have to turn one child away," she said. "Gardner said, `You know, that was God's first miracle because they gave you that money, and they didn't even appoint a committee.'" The people of Mercery used the money to build an eight-room school for 400 children in kindergarten through the sixth grade. The school included a much-needed lunchroom that served more than just the students.
"You would see that there would be mothers holding younger children by the wall and watching them eat," Landers said. "If a child saw his or her mother, they left something on their plate and placed it ... in front of their mother and then returned to class." The Episcopal school even caught the attention of Mercery's voodoo priest, who decided to send his children there.
Landers also played a role in Mercery obtaining a clean-water source. She learned that the villagers were washing and bathing in the only water supply available - a muddy, stagnant pond tainted by sewage.
Landers knew that Southern Baptist missionaries were digging wells in Haiti, so she wrote and asked the missionaries to consider drilling a well at Mercery. After visiting the villages, the Baptists told Landers that they would build the well if she could give them $1,000 for pipe. She returned to El Dorado and asked a doctor who attended her church to donate to the cause. The last time Landers checked, the Baptist well was still the village's and school's sole source of clean water.
Today, the Mercery school is self-supporting and independent of the Haiti Education Foundation.
"I do not hear regularly from Mercery," she said, "but I do understand that the school is doing fine, and the economy in the village is higher than most because they have learned how to make items to sell."
"SCHOOLS IN THE MOUNTAINS"
In 1989, Albert told the Landerses that he was leaving Leogane to serve churches in the mountains of western Haiti.
He said God had told him in a dream that a school needed to be built next to each of the seven Episcopal churches in the mountains.
"We were still supporting the school at Mercery, and I said, `Pere Albert, how can we support seven more schools?'" Landers said.
"He said, `I don't know how we'll support seven more schools. But there's one thing I do know: If God wants schools in the mountains, there will be schools in the mountains.'" Landers wasn't sure where to start until her husband suggested that she call Presbyterian women's groups. She got her first speaking engagement at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Hot Springs. Her slide presentation so impressed one of the women that the woman's family donated $10,000 to the schoolbuilding project.
Landers looked down at the check and thought, "God does want schools in the mountains." Cherident became the site of the first primary school. But Albert continued to start churches and request more schools. Landers, paying her own way, traveled from the Shenandoah Valley to the Hollywood hills to raise the money.
But Albert didn't live to see how far the ministry he inspired would expand. He died in July 2005 of pancreatic cancer.
Today, the foundation has donors from a variety of religious groups in 37 of the 50 states. For $91 a year, the foundation can pay for a student's tuition, shoes, a school uniform, textbook, Creole Bible and a daily cup of milk.
In some ways, Landers has acted as a one-woman economic stimulus package in this distant outpost far from Haiti's troubled, trash-strewn capital.
Like the other mountain villages, Cherident has little in the way of creature comforts. The few houses in each village are mostly two-room, wooden huts. The more prosperous dwellings have tin roofs; the more destitute have thatch.
There are no traffic lights, no street signs and no paved roads.
Most people travel by foot along roads where hurricanes have blown away much of the dirt, leaving only rock.
Landers' foundation has paid to erect two-story concrete buildings where once there were only shacks. Each month the foundation provides salaries for 441 teachers, 46 teacher assistants and 44 principals. While the vast majority of Haitians live on less than $2 a day, the foundation pays its staff salaries ranging from $65 to $100 a month year-round.
Last year, the foundation gave a total of $616,318 to Haiti. On average, the group wires the Episcopal board that operates the schools about $39,000 monthly.
The foundation now also partners with Living Waters of the World, which recently installed water-purification systems in Cherident and the village of Bainet. It also helped inspire Haiti Health Partnership, a joint ministry of First Presbyterian Church in Fort Smith and congregations in California and Tennessee. The ministry operates a clinic in Cherident.
INSIDE THE SCHOOLS
But the schools are Landers' greatest joy. She said some students begin walking to school as early as 4 a.m. to cross the rocky terrain in time for class. By about 6:45 a.m., the main road leading to Cherident is full of students - all in spotless uniforms kept clean without the aid of washing machines and dryers.
At the Frances Landers Technical School in Cherident, the students begin the day lined up in the front courtyard. They pray and then join in singing the first verse of "How Great Thou Art" in French before they head to class.
Their course work is designed to be rigorous. Only students who plan to go to college attend "Terminal 2," the Haitian equivalent of a senior year. In one Terminal 2 class in Cherident, 16 students are studying calculus.
Asked what careers they hope to pursue, students named a range of professions. Three of the boys wanted to become electrical engineers, one boy wanted to become a civil engineer, boys and girls wanted to go into medicine, a girl and boy each wanted to become Episcopal priests.
All those professions require college degrees, but already students from the schools have gone on to study at universities in Port-au-Prince.
Forty of the schools' graduates enrolled in a university this year. Four received their college diplomas in December, and two will graduate this month.
Former students have become teachers, nurses, priests and agricultural experts helping to fight the rampant erosion that threatens Haiti's sparse farmland.
Still, college is expensive, and the foundation has been unable to provide much help for students after they graduate from secondary school. Foundation leaders hope to build a dormitory for its graduates in Leogane so the students can attend a university without moving to the dangerous slums of Port-au-Prince.Even for college graduates, jobs are scarce.
While this was likely Landers' last trip to Haiti, she plans to continue traveling across the United States, raising awareness and money for the children she loves.
She also has taken steps to ensure that the foundation will continue well into the future. One of her sons, Mike Landers, has replaced her as president. She continues to serve as chairman.
Landers' work with the Haiti schools has strengthened her faith, she said.
"If anyone had told me 12 years ago that this would be here, I would have said `no way,'" Landers said. "But what I've learned is that if God wants it, it's going to happen." More information about the Haiti Education Foundation is available at www.haitifoundation.org.
This article was published 05/14/2008
===========================================
A LITERATE LEGACY Arkansan builds schools in Haiti 91-year-old El Dorado woman revisits nation where she gives children hope
STORY BY HEATHER HAHN PHOTOS BY CHRIS DEAN ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
14 May 2008
The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Copyright (c) 2008 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved.
CHERIDENT, HAITI - Frances Landers climbed into the front passenger seat and braced for another bone-rattling journey.
To get from Cherident to the village of Hess, the white Isuzu truck wended up a steep, rocky track hardly wider than a hiking trail. The 20-minute ride took Landers past women with baskets balanced on their heads, wooden shacks with tin roofs, the occasional goat with its nose in the vegetation, and rows of corn and other crops terraced into the mountainside.
Finally, the truck reached its destination - a half-finished concrete building that will soon be a primary school named for her late husband, Dr. Gardner Landers, who died in 2006. The school is being built with private donations given in his memory.
For the past two days, the 91-year-old widow from El Dorado had braved three airplane flights and the harrowing drive into Haiti's remote southern mountains just for this moment.
"He would be so pleased," she said. "And then to think, there's going to be a school that's near enough for the children to belong to." This was Landers' 43rd trip to Haiti.
More than 25 years ago, while working as a medical volunteer, Landers discovered a village that had no school and vowed to change that. She launched one school, then another, then dozens more.
Today, in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, where nearly half the population is illiterate, thousands of young people are getting an education and at least one meal a day because of Landers' vision.
"It just gives the children purpose to be able to go to school," Landers said. "The kids have hope for the future. They realize that without an education, they don't have a chance to have any kind of life. They'll have an existence but not a life." Many of the children in Cherident said the rice, beans and meat they get at school are typically the only food they get each weekday. Still in a country that recently saw riots over the rising cost of rice and other staples, few students at the Haiti Education Foundation schools bear the tell-tale signs of malnourishment - discolored hair, bleached skin and swollen bellies.
Anci Fils-Aime, 31, is a graduate of the schools that Landers helped start in Cherident. With a degree in accounting from the Episcopal university in Port-au-Prince, Fils-Aime serves as the schools' treasurer.
Without Landers, he said, many of the children in rural west Haiti would be tending their family's gardens with picks and machetes or helping to sell produce in a street-side market. Like their parents, most of them would have never learned to read.
Landers is the chairman and founder of the El Dorado-based Haiti Education Foundation that provides the schools' funding. Much of the financial support comes from donations from churches across the United States, including First Presbyterian Church in El Dorado, where Landers is a longtime member.
The day-to-day operations of the schools are managed by two parishes in the Episcopal Church of Haiti.
"This is a God thing," said Susan Turbeville, the foundation's sole employee and the trip's main organizer. "A lot of people have stepped out in faith to make this happen." The new Gardner Landers School is roughly 50 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital. It is the most recent addition to the 40 primary schools and 10 secondary schools financially supported by the foundation.
Altogether, the schools had an enrollment of 11,474 students last year - more than all but five school districts in Arkansas.
HELLO AND GOODBYE
Landers traveled to Haiti in late April for the first time since 2004. At 91, she knew it would likely be her last visit.
Landers wanted to see the progress made since her last trip. She also wanted to say goodbye to a land she has grown to love.
Before she departed for Haiti, the U.S. State Department was advising Americans to defer all unnecessary travel to that country because of recent civil unrest. But for Landers, such warnings were nothing new. In her 30 years of traveling to Haiti, the unstable country has always been under some kind of travel warning for political upheaval or violence, she said.
But on this journey, Landers was not alone. She made the trip with seven other foundation supporters, including Turbeville and a son, Arkansas Circuit Judge Mike Landers. Her traveling companions came from around the United States - Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and West Virginia.
They stayed in a guesthouse built for American visitors near the schools in Cherident. By the standards of the Haitian mountains, the house offered luxurious accommodations. It had an electrical generator that powered a single fluorescent bulb in each room, indoor plumbing and toilets that worked most of the time, and, best of all, a kitchen with purified water.
As with all of her earlier trips to Haiti, Landers and her traveling companions paid for their travel out of their own pockets. She is determined that all donations, unless specifically allocated otherwise, go toward supporting the schools.
In the tiny village of Hess, dotted with mango and palm trees, about 80 children in kindergarten through second grade attend class in a one-room tin building that doubles as an Episcopal church.
Parents in the community organized the makeshift school because the nearest primary school was too far away for the youngest pupils to reach on foot. The Gardner Landers Memorial School will replace the flimsy, cramped, windowless quarters with spacious and solid classrooms.
On Landers' arrival, the teacher and the children, all dressed in neat yellow uniforms, filed out of the tin building to greet their elegant and spry Arkansas benefactor.
Landers sat nearby on a concrete ledge that's part of the new school's construction site. The children clustered around her. After the group posed for photos, the youngsters serenaded Landers in French.
"Come to school," they sang. "Don't stay in your house. Come to learn." Cerisier Bernadette, 32, the school's teacher, is a graduate of the secondary school in Cherident, named the Frances Landers Technical School.
"I loved the education I received there," she said through a translator. "That's why I am a teacher today."
BRINGING SIGHT TO THE BLIND
What first drew the Landerses to Haiti wasn't an interest in its people's education but their eyesight.
A representative from the Medical Benevolence Foundation, which supports Presbyterian hospitals and clinics around the globe, had spoken at the Landerses' church in the 1970s. He told the congregation that without the help of American doctors, most people with cataracts in Haiti would be blind for life.
That news stunned the Landerses, who knew that cataract surgery was routine throughout the United States. So, the couple volunteered to spend Thanksgiving week of 1977 helping out at Hopital Sainte Croix (Holy Cross Hospital) in the coastal city of Leogane, about 19 miles west of Port-au-Prince.
"Some of the people had walked days to the hospital, some with their blind relatives, to see whether they would be eligible for cataract surgery," Landers recalled.
"We worked a week and really thought that we would only go once, but at the end of the week we found people waiting that had not even been seen." The couple returned the week after Easter, and once again, they found the time too short to serve all those who showed up. For the next 12 years, the Landerses continued to visit Haiti twice a year around Easter and Thanksgiving.
During that time, the hospital - a joint operation of the Episcopal Church of Haiti and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) - hired as chaplain the Rev. Jean Wilfrid Albert, a graduate of the Episcopal seminary in Haiti.
Frances Landers and "Pere" - that is, "Father" - Albert became fast friends. She remembers Albert continually telling her that education was the answer to Haiti's many woes.
One day, he took her to the village of Mercery, a community where, he said, no one could read or write. At the time, most people in Mercery practiced voodoo, and the voodoo priest was the most influential man in town.
But Albert pointed to a small building that he planned to use as a church. The next year, he asked Landers for help in establishing a school inside the church building.
She appealed for assistance from the Presbytery of the Pines, the regional governing body for Presbyterian churches in southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana. A congregation in Monroe, La., learned of her efforts and donated money from its Vacation Bible School to pay a teacher's salary.
When Landers next traveled to Mercery in 1981, she saw a classroom of happy children who sang to her and presented her with flowers. Then she saw a girl ask Albert if she could go to school there too. But Albert had to tell her there was no room.
"I took her picture and took it home to my church and asked them if we could build a school where we would not have to turn one child away," she said. "Gardner said, `You know, that was God's first miracle because they gave you that money, and they didn't even appoint a committee.'" The people of Mercery used the money to build an eight-room school for 400 children in kindergarten through the sixth grade. The school included a much-needed lunchroom that served more than just the students.
"You would see that there would be mothers holding younger children by the wall and watching them eat," Landers said. "If a child saw his or her mother, they left something on their plate and placed it ... in front of their mother and then returned to class." The Episcopal school even caught the attention of Mercery's voodoo priest, who decided to send his children there.
Landers also played a role in Mercery obtaining a clean-water source. She learned that the villagers were washing and bathing in the only water supply available - a muddy, stagnant pond tainted by sewage.
Landers knew that Southern Baptist missionaries were digging wells in Haiti, so she wrote and asked the missionaries to consider drilling a well at Mercery. After visiting the villages, the Baptists told Landers that they would build the well if she could give them $1,000 for pipe. She returned to El Dorado and asked a doctor who attended her church to donate to the cause. The last time Landers checked, the Baptist well was still the village's and school's sole source of clean water.
Today, the Mercery school is self-supporting and independent of the Haiti Education Foundation.
"I do not hear regularly from Mercery," she said, "but I do understand that the school is doing fine, and the economy in the village is higher than most because they have learned how to make items to sell."
"SCHOOLS IN THE MOUNTAINS"
In 1989, Albert told the Landerses that he was leaving Leogane to serve churches in the mountains of western Haiti.
He said God had told him in a dream that a school needed to be built next to each of the seven Episcopal churches in the mountains.
"We were still supporting the school at Mercery, and I said, `Pere Albert, how can we support seven more schools?'" Landers said.
"He said, `I don't know how we'll support seven more schools. But there's one thing I do know: If God wants schools in the mountains, there will be schools in the mountains.'" Landers wasn't sure where to start until her husband suggested that she call Presbyterian women's groups. She got her first speaking engagement at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Hot Springs. Her slide presentation so impressed one of the women that the woman's family donated $10,000 to the schoolbuilding project.
Landers looked down at the check and thought, "God does want schools in the mountains." Cherident became the site of the first primary school. But Albert continued to start churches and request more schools. Landers, paying her own way, traveled from the Shenandoah Valley to the Hollywood hills to raise the money.
But Albert didn't live to see how far the ministry he inspired would expand. He died in July 2005 of pancreatic cancer.
Today, the foundation has donors from a variety of religious groups in 37 of the 50 states. For $91 a year, the foundation can pay for a student's tuition, shoes, a school uniform, textbook, Creole Bible and a daily cup of milk.
In some ways, Landers has acted as a one-woman economic stimulus package in this distant outpost far from Haiti's troubled, trash-strewn capital.
Like the other mountain villages, Cherident has little in the way of creature comforts. The few houses in each village are mostly two-room, wooden huts. The more prosperous dwellings have tin roofs; the more destitute have thatch.
There are no traffic lights, no street signs and no paved roads.
Most people travel by foot along roads where hurricanes have blown away much of the dirt, leaving only rock.
Landers' foundation has paid to erect two-story concrete buildings where once there were only shacks. Each month the foundation provides salaries for 441 teachers, 46 teacher assistants and 44 principals. While the vast majority of Haitians live on less than $2 a day, the foundation pays its staff salaries ranging from $65 to $100 a month year-round.
Last year, the foundation gave a total of $616,318 to Haiti. On average, the group wires the Episcopal board that operates the schools about $39,000 monthly.
The foundation now also partners with Living Waters of the World, which recently installed water-purification systems in Cherident and the village of Bainet. It also helped inspire Haiti Health Partnership, a joint ministry of First Presbyterian Church in Fort Smith and congregations in California and Tennessee. The ministry operates a clinic in Cherident.
INSIDE THE SCHOOLS
But the schools are Landers' greatest joy. She said some students begin walking to school as early as 4 a.m. to cross the rocky terrain in time for class. By about 6:45 a.m., the main road leading to Cherident is full of students - all in spotless uniforms kept clean without the aid of washing machines and dryers.
At the Frances Landers Technical School in Cherident, the students begin the day lined up in the front courtyard. They pray and then join in singing the first verse of "How Great Thou Art" in French before they head to class.
Their course work is designed to be rigorous. Only students who plan to go to college attend "Terminal 2," the Haitian equivalent of a senior year. In one Terminal 2 class in Cherident, 16 students are studying calculus.
Asked what careers they hope to pursue, students named a range of professions. Three of the boys wanted to become electrical engineers, one boy wanted to become a civil engineer, boys and girls wanted to go into medicine, a girl and boy each wanted to become Episcopal priests.
All those professions require college degrees, but already students from the schools have gone on to study at universities in Port-au-Prince.
Forty of the schools' graduates enrolled in a university this year. Four received their college diplomas in December, and two will graduate this month.
Former students have become teachers, nurses, priests and agricultural experts helping to fight the rampant erosion that threatens Haiti's sparse farmland.
Still, college is expensive, and the foundation has been unable to provide much help for students after they graduate from secondary school. Foundation leaders hope to build a dormitory for its graduates in Leogane so the students can attend a university without moving to the dangerous slums of Port-au-Prince.Even for college graduates, jobs are scarce.
While this was likely Landers' last trip to Haiti, she plans to continue traveling across the United States, raising awareness and money for the children she loves.
She also has taken steps to ensure that the foundation will continue well into the future. One of her sons, Mike Landers, has replaced her as president. She continues to serve as chairman.
Landers' work with the Haiti schools has strengthened her faith, she said.
"If anyone had told me 12 years ago that this would be here, I would have said `no way,'" Landers said. "But what I've learned is that if God wants it, it's going to happen." More information about the Haiti Education Foundation is available at www.haitifoundation.org.
This article was published 05/14/2008
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