Haitian Ministries for the Diocese of Norwich, Inc

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                          HAITIAN MINISTRIES HAS A NEW ADDRESS

                                Please send all regular mail correspondence to:

                                                   199 Broadway

                                              Norwich, CT 06360

Click here for a list of events and fund-raisers

     THE REACH OF HAITIAN MINISTRIES SINCE THE EARTHQUAKE

Six months after the earthquake, Haitian Ministries remains focused on delivering relief aid directly to people in Port-au-Prince and surrounding communities whose lives have been upended by the devastation.

Since mid-January through July, Haitian Ministries has given more than $252,000 in emergency funds to it partners: 1) nine twinned parish communities; 2) two orphanages in or just outside Port-au-Prince; 3) a neighborhood meal program for 75 to 140 children in a city slum; 4) a meal program for children on the island of La Gonave; 5) special medical missions in and around Port-au-Prince; and 6) art therapy for children and teenagers to help them deal with the trauma of the earthquake and its aftermath.

Also, five members of the ministry’s Haitian staff have received financial assistance for themselves and their families, and their children have been enrolled in the ministry’s scholarship program. The Tierney-Tobin Memorial Scholarship program pays for the tuitions and books needed for private school, whether it is primary or secondary, a technical school, or a university. (Since the government provides very little public education, more than 90 percent of Haiti’s students attend private institutions.)

Lanitte Belladente, the Norwich Mission House cook who underwent an amputation to a leg injured in the collapse of the house, has received additional financial and medical support. She is now being fitted for a prosthesis by the Hanger Clinic, set up at Hospital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles (in central Haiti) to treat amputees.

The $252,000 in emergency assistance does not mark the completion of relief funds and does not include the considerable financial aid that most of the nine parishes and the two orphanages have received directly from their twinned partners in the United States through Haitian Ministries. The twinning relationships have formed over the last 25 years through Haitian Ministries.

For instance, the Diocese of Norwich of Connecticut, which itself is twinned with the Archdiocese of Port-au-Prince, has given $25,000 to help the archdiocese recover from the catastrophe that took lives—including that of Archbishop Serge Miot—and destroyed many churches and rectories. Haitian Ministries has given the archdiocese thus far an additional $26,000.

Haitian Ministries also shipped or took to the archdiocese more than 200 items used in the Catholic Church during the celebration of Mass, including vestments and chalices. These were donated by people and churches after an appeal throughout the Diocese of Norwich.

Although Haitian Ministries lost its Norwich Mission House on January 12th, it has been renting a house in the same area of the city. Four staff members and their families are living full- or part-time at the house, which serves as the ministry’s base for in-country operations. A parish in Milwaukee—Our Lady of Lourdes—is twinned with the mission house and has also provided significant emergency aid.

Medical mission teams have been housed at the temporary mission house, and art therapists from the U.S., France and Canada who are participating in the therapy initiative stay there. The therapists belong to CHART (Communities Healing through ART), an association formed in 2005 to recruit art therapists to give psycho-social treatment to children in South Asia following the tsunami. The CHART initiative through Haitian Ministries is the group’s largest commitment and is envisioned to last at least a year, with training for Haitians who could continue the work for years to come.

Over the last six months, Haitian Ministries has been working to keep track of all the students in its Tierney-Tobin scholarship program. Seven of the 136 students who began the 2009-2010 academic year in the program were killed in the earthquake. Many of the schools were destroyed or damaged. Today, most of the surviving 129 students are back in class until the end of the academic year in August. (The school calendar shifted because of the disaster.)

All the students, who range from first-graders to medical school students, are sponsored by donors in the United States and live in the Norwich Mission House neighborhood. They attend high-performing private schools in the area, and their enrollment in the scholarship program is predicated on financial need and academic merit. Haitian Ministries will provide the family of each student a special $50 allotment this summer.

Also, for the coming school year, the ministry must replace thousands of dollars worth of books lost in the earthquake. The ministry hopes to find more donors willing to sponsor students in the Tierney-Tobin, because the number of families in dire need has soared; many families with one child in the program have requested admittance of their other children, because they have lost the jobs they held before the earthquake.

Because most of the students now live in tents and attend schools that are in ruins, Haitian Ministries hopes to provide a critically needed Student Resource Center in the mission house neighborhood. The rented space—about the size of two large classrooms—would offer a safe and clean location where children and teenagers could study at desks, find basic reference materials, and use computers. As the center develops, special classes would help in computer literacy for all ages, and workshops would be geared to the needs of students in different grades. A tutoring program, in which older students would help younger ones, would be instituted.

In the early days after the earthquake, Haitian Ministries put out appeals for the donation of tents, tarps, blankets, and art supplies. The responses by individuals, student groups, civic groups, and other associations have been greatly appreciated.

Haitian Ministries knows that Haiti’s recovery from the earthquake will take years of focus and dedication, solid planning and partnership, and hard work.

In the years to come, Haitian Ministries will stand firm by its guiding principle of “helping Haitians help Haitians.”

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The following is a breakdown of some of the emergency funds given by Haitian Ministries since mid-January.

This is not a comprehensive list of money spent or disbursed by Haitian Ministries for special circumstances arising from the earthquake. For instance, it does not include: 1) money and other various support to the six staff members in Haiti;  2) purchase of a mission house vehicle to replace one destroyed in the earthquake; 3) rent for a temporary mission house and the office and household equipment and supplies needed to operate it.

Also, this list does not include the considerable funds given directly by twins in the United States to their partners in Haiti through Haitian Ministries.

PARISHES:

  1.  $26,000 to the ARCHDIOCESE OF PORT-AU-PRINCE.  The archdiocese is twinned with the Diocese of Norwich.
  2. $14,000 to NOTRE DAME DE LA PRESENTATION of LES PALMES, a mountain parish of about 36,000 not far from the earthquake’s epicenter where more than 50 people were killed and about 1,400 people left homeless. Much of the relief money has been spent to feed, clothe and provide shelter for the displaced.  Also, money has been used to clear the rubble of the parish’s main church, which collapsed, and to build a sturdy, temporary one in its place.  This parish is twinned with St. Mary of Coventry, CT.
  3. $13,500 to NOTRE DAME DE LOURDES of CITE MILITAIRE, a parish near downtown Port-au-Prince where thousands of people encamped in a “tent city” within hours after the earthquake. The grounds of the church are still being used by the community at large. Also, the church was damaged, and a temporary structure has been erected. The parish is twinned with St. Mark the Evangelist of Westbrook, CT.
  4. $10,000 to IMMACULATE CONCEPTION of FONDS-BAPTISTE, a mountain community north of Port-au-Prince where an extremely impoverished populace suffered deaths and destruction of homes. Like other parishes outside of the capital, Fonds-Baptiste had an influx of people after the earthquake. Providing for these “refugees” has severely strained the rural communities. This parish is twinned with Church of the Holy Family of Hebron, CT.
  5. $9,500 to ST. ANNE of SAINTAARD, a community on the coastline north of the capital. Many refugees from Port-au-Prince came here. The parish is twinned with St. Elizabeth Seton of Rocky Hill, CT.
  6. $6,000 to ST. JUDE of MON OPITAL, a community in the high hills above Port-au-Prince. This parish is twinned with GESU of Milwaukee, which has given generous relief aid.
  7. $6,000 to OUR LADY OF SEVEN SORROWS of GRAN BOULAGE, which is northeast of the capital. This parish recently twinned with Sacred Heart of Southbury.
  8. $5,500 to ST. GENEVIEVE of ZORANJE, a rural community northeast of the capital. This parish is twinned with St. Patrick-St. Anthony of Hartford.  It is also twinned with St. Pius X, St. Mary and St. Anthony—all three of the Padua Parish in Solon Springs, WI.
  9. $4,200 to ST. PIERRE of GANTHIER, a community east of Port-au-Prince, off one of the main routes to the Dominican Republic. The parish is twinned with St. Matthew of Tolland, CT.

ORPHANAGES:

  1. $19,500 to LA MAISON L’ARC-EN-CIEL, an orphanage for children affected by HIV/AIDS where the number of residents has jumped from about 45 to 70. The money is helping to complete a new orphanage, under construction before the earthquake. The orphanage is twinned with St. John the Evangelist of Montville, CT.
  2. $13,500 to LES FOYER DES FILLES DE DIEU, also known as Paula Thybulle’s orphanage for girls. Money has been spent to feed and clothe approximately 70 girls. Also, Mrs. Thybulle has purchased 4.5 acres in a community just outside the capital where she plans to build a new orphanage. The orphanage is twinned with Mercy High School in Middletown, CT.

FOOD PROGRAMS:

  1. $13,500 to feed children who live in a community in the north of the island of La Gonave. The island is generally considered to be one of the poorest areas of Haiti. The program gets support from St. Augustine of Brooklyn, NY.
  2. $6,500 to Madame Samson’s meal program, now serving daily mid-day meals to as many as 140 children in a city slum. (Haitian Ministries, which is the sole provider for this program, also gives a regular monthly allotment.)

NORWICH MISSION HOUSE:

  1. Haitian Ministries has spent money on the property of the destroyed Norwich Mission House, to include putting up a temporary but sturdy perimeter wall and hiring security guards.  (The rubble of the house has not yet been removed, pending completion of legal actions.) Also, there have been costs to set up the new temporary mission house and to equip it with basic necessities. Norwich Mission House is twinned with Our Lady of Lourdes of Milwaukee.

SPECIAL MISSIONS TO HAITI:

  1. $10,000 to medical staff, including American teams and Haitian teams who work with Paula Thybulle’s medical clinic and mobile clinic.
  2. $3,000 for two CHART teams who have already gone to Haiti. One trip a month is planned for the coming year.

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School Is A Summer Blessing for Twins

Fabiola Hyppolite has lived the last six months in a tent with more than 40 people— along with her mother, her father, her twin, and two other sisters.

Her family lost the small cinderblock home they rented in Port-au-Prince on January 12th.  Today, their belongings consist of a few clothes and a large mattress, wedged among dozens of others that cover nearly all the ground under their tent.

Life since the earthquake has turned almost unimaginably hard for this 9-year-old.  Fabiola has asthma and allergies. In the crowded conditions under the large tent provided by US AID—among several others like it in this improvised  tarp “city”—the still air stays dusty and the linens off-color. There is no running water, no toilets.  People cook on make-shift grills in the narrow dirt alleys running between tents. When Fabiola speaks, her raspy voice is barely audible.  Her small chest heaves with every breath.  There is no doctor nearby.

This summer, Fabiola and her twin, Fabienne, have at least one treat: They get to go to school. By being in their fourth-grade class, they don’t have to while away the hours of the searing midday heat under the plastic of their home.  Although their school was badly damaged in the earthquake, the temporary set-up for classes is not as oppressive.

Neither of the twins would be able to attend school if it were not for Haitian Ministries’ scholarship program. With  donations from people in the United States, the Tierney-Tobin Memorial Scholarship program pays the school tuitions for more than 130 students.  Fabiola and Fabienne have been in the program for two years; each girl has a sponsor who has pledged to pay for her education for at least five years.  Without these sponsorships, the girls would have no schooling. Since the government provides very little public education, more than 90 percent of all students in Haiti are attending private institutions. Tuitions often run higher than what families make in a year.

Right after the earthquake, Fabiola’s father lost his job as a security guard at a private home. The family decided to leave the country. Today, he wanders the city looking for work, and Fabiola’s mother usually stays at the tent. She also has a 7-year-old and another daughter who is 11.

Although the Hyppolites have no income, they have become members of a special community, forged from destitution and formed to provide at least some of the basic necessities for all the families under the tent.  People pitch in whatever coins or bills they can, and someone selected as the shopper buys as much water, rice, beans, and corn as possible. Cooking is usually communal.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” says Fabiola’s 44-year-old mother, Edith.
For now, though, school is in session.  Classes will end in August, and a new academic year should begin in October. Fabiola is already looking forward to next year.  She likes history, geography and mathematics.  And, on one Saturday afternoon under her tent, Fabiola says that she would like to send a “thank-you” to the person who has made school so wonderfully possible in her life.
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If you would like to learn about sponsoring a Haitian student in primary school, secondary school, technical school, or university, please contact us at: 860.638.1018; or by e-mail at: info@haitianministries.org.  Also, just click “Projects/Partnerships” on the left side of this home page, and you will see “Education.”)

                           For information on initiatives in Haiti, click on::

             Art Therapists to Haiti
             Medical Mission Teams

 Click here to visit The Day Newspaper, New London, CT for reports during a trip to Haiti in January, just after the earthquake.

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        SHOPPING AT HAITI'S BACK PORCH -- ANOTHER WAY TO HELP

Haiti’s Back Porch – a non-profit shop in Middletown, CT – is offering many crafts for sale. Proceeds will benefit the earthquake victims.

The shop sells art, crafts, jewelry and other items made by artists in Haiti.

The shop is at 100 Riverview Center, Suite 310, Middletown (located on the brick walkway between the Middletown Police Station and Amici restaurant, both on Main Street).

For more information on hours, call Patty Kantrowitz at 860.344.9547 or email: veveheart@aol.com