Update On The Kids and Employees!
As you may have seen with our recent Facebook pics, our kids have begun getting back to school recently. Not every school in our area has started, but many of them have and most of our kids are back.
With school starting comes at least some sense of normalcy for the kids. We have quite a few in high school and they are at the school for most of the day each day and then studying quite a bit when they are home. Between going to school and going to church our kids have a lot of their time filled up and many of them will do some sort of extracurricular like soccer as well.
I get to speak with some of our employees regularly too, and there is quite a difference in how they are feeling and how our kids are. There is still a sense of fear and hopelessness in their descriptions of their country that is difficult to hear. We keep hoping something will happen, but nothing does and nobody comes.
I ask them what they think needs to happen for change to occur and nobody even has an answer anymore.
The good thing is, at least for now, most of the kids do not have that same sense of hopelessness and fear. Some of our older kids probably do, but they would not necessarily express that to us right now.
I do want to close by saying one thing to everyone who is still reading this. You guys have changed the lives of so many people that it is hard to describe.
Our kids, of course, are different because of you. The fact that they are attending school, on pace to graduate, get to go to church every week, and eat 3 meals per day plus snacks is just amazing. Nobody in rural Haiti gets to do those things, but our kids do.
The more I talk to our employees, the more I can see what your support has done for them and their families and their extended families. For many of them, they are the only people in their whole family or even their entire street/neighborhood that have jobs and make enough money to eat. They are able to provide food for their entire family and in many cases extended family and friends.
It is an amazing thing to think that people like you in Jacksonville, LaGrange, Ohio, Tennessee, and other places around America are providing jobs for adults and care for children in a country that is struggling like Haiti is. Thank you for all that you do!
On a Side Note: Remember All Things New for Giving Tuesday this year! This will be one of the most important fundraising events we have had in a long time. Since COVID, prices in Haiti have increased much more dramatically than they have here and we have not been able to get one of our fundraisers back on track in the past few years. The bottom line...Let's make this year's Giving Tuesday the best yet!