2017 End of Year Review

We are so very grateful for your support and excited to share with you all that has been accomplished with your help this year!

GOAL: Reunite – Complete!

We are happy to announce that, as of June, 2017, all the children previously residing at the Godet Children’s Center have been successfully reunited with either their own family or a foster family. The children are now all living in healthier family environments, developing relationships within their families and communities and learning the life skills they will need to be successful as adults.

We continue to check in with the children at least once a month to ensure they are attending school and having their basic needs met. We provide monthly food to some of the families as well as clothing and medical care for all the children. We also cover all the children’s school tuition, books and uniforms. This helps ensure the children will be able to remain with their families and not be at risk for being placed in another orphanage.

GOAL: Family Support – Ongoing!

We continually look for ways to help families who may be struggling and need assistance. Alicia and Marie-Ange in St. Marc receive school scholarships for six of their children, a rental home for Alicia’s family and medical care for Alicia’s son, Ricardo who is suffering from hydrocephalus. A young teenage mother of twins was provided with a place to live in order to keep the family together. A family in Godet receives monthly deliveries of food so they can continue to care for their handicapped child.

After Hurricane Matthew struck Haiti in October of 2016, we assisted many families that were in need by providing food, water and supplies immediately after the storm. We were able to build 3 new homes for families in the St. Marc area as well as repair others damaged in the storm. Your generous donations also enabled us to quickly replace the roof on the Godet School that was torn off in the storm.

A new program we have recently started to support families is our widows feeding program in Bon Repo, overseen by our missionary, Jason Carroll. We have 11 widows that are given a supply of food while attending a monthly Bible study. The program’s goal is to share the gospel with these women while providing emotional support and meeting their physical needs.

GOAL: Educate – Growing!

We still work closely with the school in Godet by providing monthly stipends for the teachers, supplies for the school and books for the students. Our daily lunch program serves each child a hot meal every school day. Approximately 100 children attend the Godet school each year. This year we were able to install a solar generator and lights in the Godet school, greatly improving the lighting in the building which was previously very dark.

We held our third annual summer school this year in Godet. This program allows the children to receive ongoing instruction through the summer, provides summer work for the teachers and continues the important feeding program that many of the students (and their families) rely on. Similar to here in the US, it can be difficult for a family to feed their children during breaks when there is no school lunch.

In 2017, we started supporting a second school in the small town of Coup Mardi Gras. This school serves approximately 200 students and has 15 staff. The school was unable to pay their teachers regularly so we have agreed to provide a monthly stipend for them, ensuring the school will remain open for the many students who attend.

Individual scholarships are also a very important part of our education outreach goal. This year we have 66 students attending school on individual scholarships!
The scholarships cover the cost of tuition, books and uniforms for the children. In addition, many of the St. Marc scholarship students also receive weekly tutoring to help them in their studies.

Working with the schools provides our missionary, Jennifer Carroll, a dental assistant, with the opportunity to provide hundreds of children with basic oral hygiene care as well as important lessons in keeping their teeth healthy. A Bible lesson is always included, too.

GOAL: Self-Sufficiency – Expanded!

We are very excited about the continued growth of our KOFAEL Microloan program, overseen by our missionaries, Eric & Elisabeth Ream. Our third Kofael group in St. Marc was officially started this year. We have 65 women currently participating in the three groups. The women do not need to be Christians to participate but the the Gospel message is shared at the monthly meetings. The directors of each group regularly check in with the women to see how their businesses are doing and provide advice on how best to succeed.

A change was made during the past two years to the microloan program and the women are now required to pay a small amount of interest on the loans they receive. This interest is not used for program expenses. Rather it is put into a savings account for the individual woman and, upon graduating from the program, she receives the money that she has saved so she can continue to expand her business. Your donations cover the costs of operating this program so that we are able to do this for the women, ensuring their continued success upon graduating.

Included in our goal of creating self-sufficient families, is job creation. Creating work for local Haitian men and women gives them the means to earn a living, take pride in their work and support their families. Through the schools, we provide work for 22 teachers and staff.

We also have 8 other men and women who work for the ministry, providing assistance to us in various ways.

This is Patrick who oversees our programs in Godet. He completes the monthly visits for all the children who previously lived at the center, delivers food to the families, and handles everything for school from registering the children and getting their uniforms to following up on attendance and report cards throughout the year. His work enables him to support his wife and 5 year old son.

We are very grateful for our Haitian staff that help us in so many ways!

We are also so very grateful for the Ream and Carroll families. Without their willingness to serve others sacrificially, our impact in Haiti would be significantly less.

And to those who support this ministry financially and through prayer – THANK YOU! It is only because of your incredible support that any of this is possible!