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School under blue tarps with cement block
seats |
Home for 24 orphaned children |
Wall to wall beds |
Food for 90 orphans being cooked over an open
fire. Checking the food is John Chew, our key contact person
in Haiti |
Rotarians in District 5220 have an excellent
opportunity to be a part of a very exciting project in Haiti. We
will be partnering with Assist International and Soles4Souls to
create a family style orphanage in Leogane, Haiti (a city 20 miles
southwest of Port-au-Prince). The project will be modeled after
Caminul Felix, a home for orphaned and abandoned children in
Romania which District 5220 has been actively supporting for many
years. House parents will be selected and they will agree to raise
8 to 12 orphaned children as a part of their family. We anticipate
that we will be building 10 to 20 homes, a school, and 10 small
businesses. The first businesses will be a bicycle repair shop and
a shoe repair and sales shop. Some of the other businesses planned
are: a bakery, a hardware store, a bulk food store, an embroidery
and clothing shop, a woodshop, a restaurant, an auto parts store,
and an internet cafe. The businesses are a key to the success of
the project as the house parents will work at the businesses
earning a salary and the profits will go back to the orphan
village which will make the project sustainable within 2 years. So
we will be giving them a “hand-up’ not a “hand-out”.
Bob Pagett, the founder of Assist
International just returned from a visit to Haiti. He says that he
has traveled to over 100 countries around the world, and he has
never seen a country that has more needs than Haiti. He describes
the situation in Leogane this way, “We met with some pastors who
are caring for 90 orphans, preparing meals over an open fire,
washing dishes and clothes with tubs of water, holding school with
tarps overhead as the school has been destroyed by the earthquake,
and the children are living in small plywood buildings with no
ventilation and as many as 24 children crammed into a building.”
Our partner organizations will be constructing the buildings.
Rotary will be involved with helping establish the businesses,
equipping the school and the homes. We anticipate there will be
many opportunities for Rotarians to travel to Haiti and help with
the project. We do have an excellent contact person, John Chew,
who has returned to live in Haiti and he is in touch with Rotary
Clubs in Haiti that will be working with us on this project. The
size of the involvement of Rotary depends on the number of Clubs
and Rotarians who want to be a part of this incredible project. We
hope to apply for a matching grant, so every $100 that your club
donates would become $350 if our application is approved by The
Rotary Foundation. Please contact project coordinator David
Gallagher for more details.See DaC-DB FIND for contact
information. |
