Jacmel & Marbial

Jacmel – Faith and Love in Action Orphanage

Another Haitian organization we partner with is Faith and Love in Action / Aid International (US 501C-3). This organization runs a boys and girls orphanage located in Jacmel, along with three schools located in St. Rock (PAP), Les Cayes and Marbial. I am particularly close with the Haitian couple who founded this organization, so much so that I call the woman (Marlaine) my Haitian mother. These are actually the people that I’m currently staying with and the orphanage I’m working with for the remainder of my stay in Haiti. (More about that later.) To summarize, our team worked on four major projects in and around Jacmel: (1.) A gardening project, (2.) post-traumatic stress group counseling and training, (3.) construction at the orphanage – a retaining wall and (4.) a medical clinic in the orphanage and Marbial. Just so I don’t lose anyone, I’ll try to write about each separately.

Gardening Project

This idea was thought up by one of the many awesome women on our team. We ran it by Marlaine who was really pumped about it and Aisha and Alisha worked with her to plan and plant a garden nearby the orphanage. The idea was to not only create a sustainable source of food but also to teach the kids how to tend it. I’m not sure about the details of what all was planted but from what I do know, it sounds like this project was a huge success, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see if anything grows.  Aisha and Alisha said they learned a lot from the people with whom they planted the garden and it turned out that they didn’t have to do quite as much work as expected! If either of you are reading this and want to provide more details, feel free!

PTSD Counseling

This is another project that I can’t provide a whole lot of detail about but I’ll at least summarize and Elisabeth, if you’re reading this, maybe you can jump in. There is a growing body of literature documenting the importance of mental health interventions following an earthquake, particularly for children. One of the members of our team, a therapist, has a passion for this type of work and she spent some time planning with Marlaine to determine the best way to address this issue for the kids and teens at the Faith and Love in Action orphanage. Early in the week, Marlaine, Elisabeth and her husband Matt held a meeting with the kids to introduce what Elisabeth would be doing throughout the week, namely group counseling sessions with some individual sessions at the end of the week. Among other things, the idea was to give the kids a place to discuss what happened, identify and also to provide some training on how to care for one another. From what I understand, its really challenging to try to do what Elisabeth was doing within a short week but the kids were incredibly, even surprisingly open about their experiences and I think it was a really valuable time for everyone involved. I personally can’t wait to hear more about it; because we were all busy with our separate projects, I did not get a chance to debrief with Elisabeth so I don’t have many stories yet. However, Marlaine just told me that she met with the kids last night and they said they learned so much from Elisabeth and they keep asking when she will be back. Watch out guys; there are a lot of people praying for you to move to Haiti. :)

Retaining Wall Construction Project

The Faith and Love in Action orphanage sits beside a rather large ravine. During hurricane season, this turns into a quite dangerous situation. In fact, I believe that it was Hurricane Gustav that recently turned this ravine into a rushing river which scooped out part of the foundation of the girls home. There are several construction projects waiting to be completed at the orphanage, including the second floor of the girls home but first things first- a retaining wall for this ravine. There were some initial frustrations with this project because it took awhile to get the concrete for the wall but once work got started, it definitely got started. And from what I heard, carrying buckets of freshly mixed concrete to pour into the forms for the wall in the hot Haitian sun is nothing short of extremely intense, hard work. Just hearing about it made me exhausted.

Medical Clinics

Our last major project was medical work. I’m again having issues with the internet so I’m going to wrap up for the night and include the details of the medical work in a separate post (hopefully tomorrow). For this section, I’ll be able to provide more detail as this was the team that I coordinated most heavily. But for now, good night!