Getting Robbed at the Market
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A little over 1 month ago, one of our employees was robbed while she was doing market shopping for All Things New. She was not held at gunpoint nor was the money forcibly taken, but she was robbed of 2 weeks worth of food and supply money for our kids in the middle of the day in a crowded market. You may have read some of our previous blogs or you may keep up with the news and know that there has been quite a bit of civil unrest here in the country. It is for a variety of reasons, but something that has happened with increasing frequency is theft and robbery, neither of which have affected All Things New until our employee was robbed. They took all of the money and they even took our employee’s cell phone. We had been in a routine where every second Saturday she and Lener would go into the market to purchase large amounts of food and supplies and people noticed. In fact, the day before we got back to Haiti (about 3 weeks ago and about 2 weeks after being robbed the first time) our employee was in the market shopping for herself when people came and took her backpack, cut it in half with a knife, and then threw it down because the money they were expecting was not inside. Needless to say we have changed our routine.
Jessica is going to write a blog very soon (tomorrow or the next day) about what our market shopping has looked like in the past and what going into the market to buy supplies in this manner looks like. Today, however, I am going to talk about some of our recent social media posts and why we have been asking people to donate to All Things New over the past few days and why we will continue to ask over the next few as well.
If you have liked and follow the ATN Facebook page, then you have seen some posts asking for people to donate and to share these posts with their friends. September and October have been financially challenging months for us in the past as school expenses occur in August and we pay for 6 months of rent on September 1. This year, however, expenses have been a little higher as our rent went up slightly and we have placed 5 kids at Christianville School (a much more expensive school) for the first time this year (Apolon, Misthafa, Tony, Tilene, and Babyson). To add to that, our LaGrange fundraiser is a little later in the year this year as it will be held on November 11 (MARK YOUR CALENDAR IF YOU LIVE IN LAGRANGE) and we have had to replace the stolen money from last month. Please consider giving to All Things New during this time, and please pray for Carline, who was robbed once and almost robbed a second time just a few short weeks later.