HAITI :: FOOD UPDATE :: Everyone deserves to eat

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: 

EVERYONE deserves to eat. 
Today and every day.
No exceptions.

Thanks to your generous support, we have raised over $6,000 to provide food for students at St. Vincent’s Center for Handicapped Children in Port-au-Prince, Haiti! That means YOU have provided 8,000 meals to these sweet kids! What an accomplishment, thanks to your big hearts.

When we contacted St. Vincent’s Director Fr. Sadoni to tell him the good news he said:

WONDERFUL! The only thing we have now in our store is some bags of rice and beans. If we find this money, we can buy more rice and beans and other things like vegetables and meat to complete the meals for the children.

While our mission is to serve these children with medical care, we can not ignore their plight and need for nutritious food. They need—no, DESERVE—to be eat healthy food on a regular basis so they can get the best possible outcomes from surgeries and other medical care that we provide.

Until a permanent food source is set in place, The Red Thread will continue to raise funds for food to sustain the children. The cost for three meals is just $2.25 per child per day! Kindly allocate your donations with “SV food”.

THANK YOU for your generosity. 

~ Sonya Yencer, VP

HAITI :: Hunger - the single gravest threat for St. Vincent's

In 2014, no one should go hungry. Especially kids.

One of our best friends grew up in a poor family in the Appalachian Mountains. He is able to laugh now as he recalls his mom cooking white beans on Monday, pinto beans on Tuesday, and on Wednesday combining the two for their evening meal. Cereal at breakfast and bologna sandwiches for lunch rounded out their days.

The majority of Americans haven’t known that level of poverty. But for the children at St. Vincent’s Center for Handicapped Children in Haiti, three meals a day of any kind is a luxury that is out of reach.

Beans are a staple at St. Vincent’s just as it was for our friend’s family. Rice stretches the protein to fill the children’s stomachs. Yet today, this simple meal is served “infrequently,” and when it is available, Father Sadoni tells us there just isn’t enough. In desperation, he has resorted to sending every child who has a family back home because he is unable to feed them regularly. Only the orphans remain.

Living with hunger.

It’s difficult to fall asleep when hunger haunts your mind and gnaws at your stomach. Until, of course, your body is weakened from lack of food over a long period of time. Hunger is painful; malnutrition causes our eyes to fail, our skin to develop lesions, our muscles to weaken and shrink, our bones to stop growing, our immune system to fail.

Lack of adequate food destroys the cognitive processes, resulting in reduced intelligence and learning, stunting not only the body but the mind of a child.*

Meeting their needs TOGETHER. 

Love and care: Fr. Sadoni and the staff at St. Vincent’s provide this in abundance on a daily basis. Their very presence in these children’s lives provides emotional nourishment and assuages the thirst for meaningful human contact.

We can show this same love and care to St. Vincent’s children by providing the basics—food and water—during this vulnerable time in their lives. Most of us reading this post have an adequate supply of both. Even our Appalachian friend’s mother was able to fill these needs for her sons. Our poverty is richness when compared to the plight of these children.

Join us in giving the life-sustaining gift of food. With your help, The Red Thread Promise is committing to supplying three months of food for the kids at St. Vincent’s. $2.25 feeds each child for a full day. That’s $6,090 per month, $18,270 total. This is a real, attainable goal. The need is urgent. Children are going hungry every day. These kids’ deprivation compels us to have funds available for the first month’s food in the next ten days -- by September 16.   

We can do it with your help.

Genesis 12:2 tells us: 

“I will bless you . . . 

and you will be a blessing to others.” 

YOU are that blessing for these children, and so are your family, friends, civic groups and churches. It takes a village.... Please share the story of St. Vincent’s kids and their current dire need in your circles. Let’s reach our goal quickly. 

Donations can be made via PayPal through our website or via check. 

Checks may be sent to:
The Red Thread Promise
249 N Belfield Ave
Havertown, PA 19083
Attn: Kathy Korge Albergate

*http://40hrfamine.wordpress.com/how-hunger-hurts

HAITI :: Food crisis at St. Vincent's escalates

Have you ever tried to write something but the message is so upsetting that you can't get the words out adequately? That's the way we feel now as we share the severity of the food shortage at St Vincent's Center for Handicapped Children, our partner in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Ever since a large international agency stopped supplying food to the Center without explanation, St. Vincent's administration has been working diligently to find a sustainable solution. Expenses have been drastically reduced and all available funds used toward food. 

This critical shortage has even forced them to restructure who they feed and when. (Author’s note: I can NOT even fathom having to make these kind of decisions.) The current situation only provides food for 76 residential students and 10 residential staff on a rotating schedule. Loosely translated, that means they don’t get 3 simple meals of beans and rice every day – some days they do, but many times they do not.

Tragically, the Center's electricity was recently cutoff as they are unable to pay the growing debt. Instead, they have diverted those funds to buy beans and rice to feed the students.

In a recent correspondence, Father Sadoni, Director of St. Vincent's, stated:

Occasionally an agency gives us some rice and beans, but it is not enough to operate the Center. We have re-approached other agencies but without success. We are now truly breathless. All St. Vincent's input is spending in the food program. At the time I wrote this report to you, there is no electricity at St. Vincent's. We don't have enough money to pay the current debt. This is the first time since my ascent to the management of the Center that I find myself in such a situation. Despite these problems, I keep hoping that one day St. Vincent's will meet its needs and that there will be no debt to pay. And we could easily feed our children.

Our hearts are broken to hear this. Our compassion brings us to action. So we are going to DO SOMETHING. 

We are asking 2 things of each and every Red Thread supporter:

1. SHARE this message. Tell others of the need. Show them the pictures of St. Vincent’s kids from our blog / website / Facebook / Instagram. If each of us shared this message with 10 friends / co-workers, what a difference we could make!!!
2. GIVE something. Donations of any size help! It costs approximately $6000 to feed all residential staff and students for 1 full month, 3 meals per day. That breaks down as such: $2.50 feeds 1 person 3 meals per day. (Author’s note: you can’t even go to McDonald’s for ONE meal for $2.50!) 

NO ONE should go without sufficient food – ever. Let’s do our part to feed the kids and start 2014 on a positive note for our brothers and sisters at St. Vincent’s.

Donations can be made via PayPal through our website or via check. Checks may be sent to:
The Red Thread Promise
249 N Belfield Ave
Havertown, PA 19083
Attn: Kathy Korge Albergate

Thank you!

Haiti Happenings, Part 6 - RE-VISIONING ST. VINCENT'S

Another highlight of our trip was delivering a goody box to Fr. Sadoni. But not your typical goody box – no chocolates or school supplies or hearing aids. Instead, the box was full of materials donning St. Vincent’s crisp new logo. 

Following the earthquake, we suggested that St. Vincent’s develop a new visual identity; a fresh look for a new era in the life of St. Vincent’s Center for Handicapped Children. In a time of re-visioning and rebuilding, it seemed like the perfect time to make a change. 

Sonya, TRTP Vice President and graphic designer by trade, worked directly with Fr. Sadoni and the Episcopal Bishop to develop this new visual identity. The job posed several challenges:

• To create a design that incorporates the institution’s Episcopal heritage
• To ensure that the logo works in both French and English 
• To select a color palette that complements St. Vincent’s signature blue buildings

In a bulging suitcase were boxes full of letterhead, business cards, envelopes, stamps and magnetic car signs, a different assortment of supplies than we are accustomed to providing our partners!

Receiving letterhead, business cards and envelopes

Car magnets donning the new logo

Best of all, thanks to donors in the design industry, we were able to give all printed materials to St. Vincent’s at no cost! THANK YOU to the photographers, designers, printers, public relations folks, and writers who supported this project. Every little bit helps.

Haiti Happenings, Part 3 - SNACK ATTACK CHALLENGE!

Living in a developed (first world) country, few of us know daily, gut-wrenching hunger. How many times have we heard "I'm starving!" and known that it was just a dramatic expression with a shallow meaning? Rarely are we confronted with bare cupboards and completely empty refrigerators. We have experienced discomfort and growling stomachs but not a gnawing pain that doesn't recede. In the year 2013, it is foreign to us that our own children may some day be truly hungry. 

During last week's trip to Haiti, Fr. Sadoni shared a heart-wrenching story about a conversation he had in recent months with his mother. You see, his mother is one of the cooks at St. Vincent’s. She and a handful of other dedicated women are responsible for making mountains out of molehills, stretching the food budget as far as it can go to feed all 250 students, teaching staff and administrators at the school. (This has been especially challenging since September, 2012 when St. Vincent’s food donor ended all distributions in Haiti.)

In recent months, his mother came to him asking for money to prepare meals for the children. With tears in his eyes, Fr. Sadoni told her there simply was none. Two hundred and fifty young mouths to feed and his answer was none. It breaks our hearts to see our friends hurting. Those could be our children and, as in all our work, we treat them as such.

Thankfully, the food situation has improved. Students are currently receiving beans & rice twice a day. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays they receive a third portion. 

Food for residential students

The Red Thread Promise has committed to supplement this meal plan by providing weekly snacks to all children, teachers and administrators through the end of the school year. Snacks will be nutritious as possible and we will support the local economy by purchasing everything in Haiti. 

The weekly cost of snacks is $250 ($0.83 per person), less than one cup of coffee or an order of value-size French fries. We’re challenging you, our supporters, to provide a snack attack for these precious kids. This one small gift is the equivalent of a hug or an “I love you” they will feel on a weekly basis.

The total cost of the project is $2500, covering the last 10 weeks of the school year. Please prayerfully consider joining us in this most basic request. PayPal is always an option as is sending a check via mail. Visit our website for giving options and details.

Fresh bananas will be one of the fruits served as snacks

Thank you for helping to keep the students of St. Vincent’s nourished so they can learn and the staff nourished so they can continue to teach and run the school in the most productive manner possible.

Haiti Happenings, Part 1 - BRACES!

What's new at St. Vincent's?

THE BRACE SHOP

Sixty or more Haiti Connection participants were able to tour St. Vincent's school, clinic and  brace shop today. Our team popped in to the brace shop to take a quick look before going to St. Vincent's to work with the kids. It was wonderful to see the brace shop up and running in the new space: large rooms, durable shiny tile floors, fresh paint, ample storage, adequate plumbing. The talented workers at the brace shop fashion custom braces and prosthesis for St. Vincent's students as well as referrals from local hospitals. 

Expanded & remodeled facilities

Interesting architecture

Fresh paint

Father Sadoni giving a tour of the facility

Visitors to the brace shop

Journeymen brace shop workers practicing their trade;
one is deaf and one physically-handicapped

New equipment

The old space waiting to be cleared

The retired bus

New Orleans – Day 2, Part 3

After hearing about what a special place St. Vincent’s was to the disabled population in and around Port-au-Prince, the room fell silent as Fr. Sadoni recounted his personal experience the day Haiti shook.

The day that changed everything...

On January 12, 2010, Fr. Sadoni was driving to meet with a parishioner. He felt the car begin to shake violently and they were suddenly being pulled off the road. The air was thick with clouds of dust, forcing Sadoni and his 2 passengers to stay with the car, waiting for the air to clear. When they could see again, they realized that the streets were impassible. So they moved the car to the sidewalk, and journeyed on foot to the parish and then on to St. Vincent’s.

People walked the streets in shock, searching for family members

The destruction was unimaginable. They passed “people sobbing, body parts in the streets”, people wandering around in shock, buildings flattened, rubble everywhere. When they reached St. Vincent’s, the two-story buildings that housed the dormitories, clinics and school had collapsed into the middle of the street. It was as if someone had given the building a nudge and tipped it over.

St. Vincent's buildings collapsed into the street

The students were terrified and confused. Thankfully, St. Vincent’s staff moved swiftly and were already evacuating the children from the damaged buildings when Sadoni arrived. (Author’s note: I can not imagine helping 350 healthy children during these circumstances, let alone blind, deaf and disabled children using crutches, canes and wheelchairs.)

Ten people from St. Vincent’s lost their life that day: 7 precious children and 3 dedicated employees. In the midst of their mourning, the group continued to focus on the living, helping to reunite families and caring for those whose permanent home was St. Vincent’s.

After 5 long days, the staff was able to locate one of the missing children, whom they presumed was dead. Instead, she had made her way to her family’s church. She was trapped in the debris there for 4 days before she was rescued and returned to St. Vincent’s.

With no shelter, the staff, children and Sadoni spent one week living on an open soccer field. They received no support from the locals who didn’t sustain damage from the quake. It was truly “every family for himself”.

The “growing smell of decay” forced the group to move out of Port-au-Prince in one of the only things they had left: their bus. They headed north to Montrouis where they lived in tents on church property for several weeks. The kids loved being out of Port-au-Prince but they were deathly afraid of the ocean with threats of a tsunami. Warner, a faithful employee of St. Vincent’s, played guitar every day, a blessing that helped to soothe the children.

Students with Fr. Sadoni and Fr. Squire in Montrouis

During their time in Montrouis, everything that was not destroyed in the earthquake was stolen from St. Vincent’s campus. Desperate people looted everything, including all documentation.

Upon the groups’ return to Port-au-Prince, Sadoni worked to find someone to clear the rubble from property. With help from Children Mission for the Blind, they were able to coordinate with the French Army to clear the area. Thankfully some of the doors, tables, furniture that was not destroyed or stolen was salvaged. But most everything was gone.

The French Army clearing the site

Today, the entire space has been cleared and is ready for rebuilding

And that’s where The Red Thread Promise steps in.

New Orleans - Day 2, Part 2

We’d like to paint a picture of St. Vincent’s for you, based on our conversations with Fr. Sadoni, Priest in Charge of Ephiphanie Church and St. Vincent’s Director for the past 3 years.

BEFORE JANUARY 12, 2010

Exterior of St. Vincent's

St. Vincent’s Center for Handicapped Children School and Medical Facility was, and still is, a unique place in the heart of Port-au-Prince. It was the first school in Haiti to care for disabled children and, over the past 65 years, has never lost its focus. Located just one block away from the Presidential palace, St. Vincent’s serves some of the most disadvantaged children in the city—blind, deaf and mute children as well as those with other physical disabilities—with ages ranging from 5 to 18. It is the only facility in Haiti to work with the blind.

The school began with just 70 children and has grown to serve 350, 150 of which are living in the dormitories. The center provides education and continuous health care to these exceptional young people, teaching them the skills necessary to take care of themselves beyond their time at St. Vincent’s and prepares them to become productive members of Haitian society.

Another equally important goal of the center is to change Haitian’s perception of people with disabilities. They envision a future where these exceptional children receive high quality care and access to mainstream opportunities in both school and work no matter where they are in Haiti.

Three different groups of children arrive at St. Vincent’s door on a daily basis:

• Day students come to school every day but return home in the evening.
• Boarding students stay year round but go home during vacation.
• Displaced and orphaned students live at the center year round. It is their home.

The school provides both elementary and secondary education. The basics of reading, writing, math, history and geography are taught. English is taught during the 3rd cycle. The classroom structure for the school is as follows:

• Kindergarten: 5 year olds
• 1st cycle: 6-9 year olds
• 2nd cycle: 9-12 year olds
• 3rd cycle: 12-15 year olds

One of the many classrooms

St. Vincent’s respects the different learning styles and capabilities of its varied student population. The center seeks out the highest level of teachers for the classrooms. They are also committed to developing partnerships with other organizations that work with disabled people in order to insure that the services delivered on site are of the highest caliber.

Some of the deaf students

The school deals with its deaf children differently than all other schools in Port-au-Prince. While everyone else teaches lip reading, St. Vincent’s teaches its students sign language. Unlike Braille, which is universal, sign language is not. It is generally taught in the spoken language of each country. Since the nuns who started St. Vincent’s were from Massachusetts, both American and French sign is taught.

Blind students learn to read and write in Braille and also work with music. The school had a music room where the students have lessons and study. Many excel in this field and aid in teaching the younger students.

St. Vincent’s housed multiple single-room clinics including orthopedic, auditory, optical, neurological and general where children could be seen for their various maladies as well as a surgical room, pharmacy and brace shop where orthopedic braces and prosthesis are made. Operated by local physicians and volunteers, these services were made available to both the students of the center as well as local residents.

The brace shop was another unique aspect of the center. Not only was it the first facility to fit and make prostheses and braces in Haiti, but it also has the distinction of being the only facility in Haiti that is entirely staffed by deaf employees. Full-time workers make and repair prosthetics, orthopedic bracing, crutches, and other apparatus needed to correct many deformities for residents and local people.

St. Vincent’s was (and still is) truly a gem, deep in the heart of Haiti.

New Orleans, Day 1

Fr. Sadoni, Director of St. Vincent's,

with Kathy, President of The Red Thread Promise

Tuesday, 9/14 – Late in the afternoon, we all arrived safe and sound in The Big Easy: Sally from Washington state, Sonya from Ohio, Randa from Canada and Fr. Sadoni from Haiti. Tom and Kathy, our local counterparts, greeted us at the airport, exchanging hugs and kisses with friends old and new. The group gathered around a well-used wooden table at an airport café for quite some time as we began drafting a press release announcing the partnership of the Episcopal Dioceses of Olympia and Louisiana, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church-Lakeview and The Red Thread Promise to support the children and rebuilding efforts of St. Vincent's Center for Handicapped Children School & Medical Facility.

Following some traffic meant to give us all a lesson it patience, we made it to our hotel where we unpacked and freshened up for dinner. Since Fr. Sadoni, director of St. Vincent’s, had never been to New Orleans, we made time for a super-condensed tour of New Orleans, driving through the French Quarter, Central Business, Warehouse and Garden Districts and Uptown, all in about 45 min! The architecture, or what we could see of it in the dark, was fantastic. Stories of Hurricane Katrina were shared as we looked on at the water lines still evident on many buildings. New Orleans has made great progress in the last 5 years, but so much still needs to be done to restore the city to its former glory.

The beautiful chandelier in the hotel's vestibule

Our work began again at dinner that evening, getting to know each other and building a personal relationship with Fr. Sadoni.

Born in Gramonde, Fr. Sadoni grew up in Port-au-Prince. He studied management at the Episcopal University (which was destroyed by the quake) and simultaneously went to seminary. Sadoni has worked in schools, hospitals and churches in different parts of Haiti since he completed his studies 5 years ago. Prior to the earthquake, he was appointed Priest in Charge of Ephiphanie Church and Director of St. Vincent’s Center for Handicapped Children School & Medical Facility.

The Center was founded in 1945 by Sister Joan Margaret to care for handicapped children, who were (and still are) treated as sub-human in Haitian society. The sisters traveled through Haiti and brought these little ones to St. Vincent’s for medical care and to receive an education, an innovative idea in Haiti.

Sixty-five years ago and to this day, there is little hope for anyone born with a disability in Haiti. Often neglected or abused by their families, handicapped children are literally left in a corner by themselves in their own homes, isolated from the rest of the family. The fortunate ones might receive an education after all other healthy siblings have been to school. It is also common practice for parents to abandon their special needs children, discarding them in bathrooms, on the streets, in front of buildings – so much that hospitals have a special area for abandoned babies. Some are even given to Voodoo priests so people can engage in sexual intercourse with them to bring good luck, according to Haitian belief.

Sadoni, a soft-spoken man of few but deliberate words, showed his passion for these children when he firmly stated that he “wants to change the children’s lives AND to change Haitian’s perception of people with disabilities.”

Our discussion then turned toward Voodoo, how it is an integral part of Haitian culture and is intermixed with nearly every other faith, especially Roman Catholicism. Interestingly enough, people of the Catholic denomination commonly practice Voodoo openly while those in other denominations tend to practice in secret.

New Orleans has an “underground” Voodoo subculture that boasts many similarities to that of its Haitian counterparts. Many practices are the same in both countries. However, there are some fundamental differences as well, including who practices the religion. In Haiti, Voodoo is primarily practiced by less educated people and there appears to be a direct correlation between level of education and the practice. In New Orleans, however, it is sometimes practiced by those who are very educated and is deemed more a cult than part of the culture.

We ended the evening on a positive note as we celebrated Sadoni’s upcoming wedding, wishing the couple good luck and a life of happiness together. As we rode back to the hotel, we considered the heavy agenda for Wednesday: gathering detailed information about St. Vincent’s needs since the earthquake; identifying and prioritizing their immediate needs; and fleshing out an action plan for the partnership to move forward and begin supporting the children of St. Vincent’s.

(Author's note: Exhausted after a day of traveling, meeting new people, and ending with a very long and late dinner, we had some comic relief at 11:00 pm that night when I was unable to view the MANY photos I had taken that afternoon and evening. Puzzled, I started examining the camera more closely and, after further investigation, realized that I had forgotten to put in the memory card. Thankfully we were all able to laugh it off, however we did ensure that the card was there every time I pulled the camera out the rest of the trip! So, the photos shown were actually taken on Wednesday, but I'm sure you won't tell anyone.)