Provide a safe home for Haitian Orphans

Thanks to your incredible generosity the children of the HTDC Orphanage have now settled into their new home. In our last project report we explained how, after almost ten years, it was time to move the orphanage to a new house.

We asked Carlo, the orphanage Director, how the kids like the new place and he had this to say:

“The kids like the new place because they have a lot of space to play together. Kenson really likes having the shade in the garden. They are all happy because we moved the playground from the old house too”.

Carlo’s also taken the opportunity to make some more changes too:

“I change the person that cooks for the kids too, and change the way we cook for a more balanced and better diet. They have vegetables 5 days a week now, and more meat too. It’s more expensive but it’s better and the kids are so happy because we do not give so much rice and beans. We do our best to give a little of everything and natural juice.”

Outside the gates though, things remain in tough Haiti overall. Carlo continued his updates:

“The political situation is getting worse, and the insecurity is worse with a lot of kidnapping happening. Schools are open but kids can not go to school everyday because of riots and people burning tires. So, we are opening a school today at the orphanage. We hire 3 teachers and one English teacher for the kids. My fiancé is helping to train the teachers - she did the first session last weekend and we will continue every weekend too . 

I still need to buy many books so that they can help the kids to improve their English and other lessons, but the money we get from overseas is less now. The USD is now around 70-75 Gourdes for a Dollar, when we used to get almost 100 Gourdes for a Dollar. But the prices stay the same”.

To help Carlo and the children deal with all these challenges, we’ve recently stepped up the amount of help we’re providing each month. This wouldn’t be possible without your continued donations. So, as always, thank you so much for all your amazing support.

Carlo’s also working hard to reduce his costs where he can and he’s currently appealing for donations of clothes and other items that can be shipped from Florida. He explained as follows:

“I have a friend in West Palm Beach in Florida. He has a spare room we can use to collect donations. When we receive enough items we can ship them to Haiti and the orphanage. That will take about two weeks. Our need is clothes, shoes, vitamins, dried food is also possible and that would help too. Other things are diapers for the babies, and toys, or anything that can help with kids”.

If you have any questions about the orphanage and how we use your donations, or if you think you could help with donations and clothes and more in Florida, then please don’t hesitate to email Andy@IDVolunteers.org. I’d be delighted to hear from you.