Provide a safe home for Haitian Orphans

In our last project report we explained how we’re raising funds this Holiday season to provide 1 more year of security for the children at the HTDC orphanage after our charity closes. 

In this report we wanted to highlight one of the children who your generosity has helped support over the years.

Fritz (pictured) is now 11 years old. Little is known about Fritz's past as he was simply left at the HTDC orphanage one day. At the time he wasn’t even 1 year old and no-one has ever returned to visit him. 

Despite this sad start to his life, Fritz is an outgoing child who likes to join in any activities. His magical smile and personality is also quick to capture the attention of any visitors.

It’s been amazing to see Fritz grow over the years and we’re including some past photos in this report so you can see how he’s changed.

If you can, we’ll hope you’ll consider making a further gift to this project. In doing so, you’ll help ensure that Fritz has the safe home and care he needs for 1 more year.

You can find out more about our plans to close down IDV on our website, and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to email Andy@IDVolunteers.org. I’d be delighted to hear from you as always.

Thank you so much for providing a safe home for Haitian orphans! 

Since we launched this project on GlobalGiving in 2010 we’ve raised a staggering $252,000 (or almost £173,000) because of you. This has been key to providing a safe home, nutritious food, quality education, health care, and enriching activities for some of Port-au-Prince’s most vulnerable children for just over 12 years.

When we first started working with the HTDC orphanage it was home to almost 50 children, who were all living in one small room and some tents. Your donations enabled us to rent them a safe home at a much bigger house nearby, as well as covering all of the orphanage’s running costs. 

The stability this provided gave the orphanage Director Carlo badly neededbreathing space. As a result, the number of children at HTDC has steadily decreased over the years to around 12, thanks to Carlo’s efforts to reunite children with remaining relatives, or in facilitating adoptions with safe, loving families.

At the same time we’ve encouraged HTDC to seek other sources of income to make the orphanage less reliant on us as its only means of support. As a result, for the last several years we’ve provided the orphanage with around $1,000 per month as our contribution to meeting the childrens’ overall needs - including food, water, fuel, cleaning supplies and the costs of caregivers and teaching staff. Your generosity has also allowed us to provide an annual transfer of $6,000 to pay the orphanage’s rent, which is currently covered until May of 2023.

Your ongoing donations have truly been vital, especially as political chaos and violence has swirled outside HTDC’s gates for the last few years.

Unfortunately, uncertainty has once again reared its head as we’ve recently had to make the sad but necessary decision to close down our charity, International Disaster Volunteers (IDV) in early 2023. We’ve genuinely done everything we can to keep support flowing to HTDC, but we’ve also been entirely run by volunteers for over 5 years, and this is now becoming unsustainable.

While the orphanage already receives support from other sources, at the moment this isn’t able to fill the gap that will be created by IDV shutting down. So, our goal now is to raise funds over Christmas and the wider holiday season to provide HTDC with a “cushion” until other support can be ramped up. 

We started discussing these plans with Carlo in September, and he’s already taking steps to register a 501(c)3, non-profit organization in the USA. We want to be able to share details on that soon, but for now we’re hoping you’ll consider donating to this project on GlobalGiving to ensure the children at HTDC have security for 1 more year.

We currently have funding in hand to maintain our existing monthly commitment of $1,000 per month until February 2023. We would love to extend this for a further 6 months until August 2023, which will cover 1 year’s payments from when we first started making plans with Carlo. We’d also love to cover the next annual rent payment of $6,000 due in full in June 2023. 

This will require us to raise a further $12,000, which we plan to transfer to HTDC as a lump sum no later than the end of February 2023.

We know you’ve already given so much, and that this may come as sad news to many of the orphanage’s regular supporters. So, if you have questions, concerns, etc please don’t hesitate to email Andy@IDVolunteers.org. I’d be delighted to hear from you as always.

You can also find out more about our plans to close down IDV on our website.