Video Update From Jenn in Cap Haitien

Hi friends!

If you follow the news, you may have heard Haiti mentioned in the headlines. And if you were online, you may seen the “Message from Jenn,” we shared on Monday.

In short the political instability that has been plaguing Haiti for years has reached a tipping point and the future is uncertain.

Instead of a newsletter this week, here’s Jenn, with an update from Cap Haitien.

If you have questions, want to learn from the questions of others, or simply want to say hello, please join us for a special Zoom Q&A session this Sunday at 6:30 pm ET.

We hope to see as many of you as possible.

Register below to access the Zoom link & meeting details.

And like Jenn said, your support does not go unnoticed. Thank you for walking with us on the Second Mile.

2022 Wrap

2022 started with a bang.

January held the opening of the birthing wing at our new maternity Center in Saint Raphael. The first baby arrived just a few days later.

We were expecting births to pick up slowly, but women arrived in labor much faster than we expected—

We continued with our gardening, community education, and “goat” programs this year. From our youngest group (age 10-14) to our oldest group (from 18 to 80), every participant received a goat. 141 goats in all.

In May and June—and again in September—we continued our efforts to illuminate the roads in the communities where we work. We continued from the 20 solar panels we installed in 2021, adding 20 new street lamps in Saint-Raphaël and another 40 additional street lamps in the community surrounding our Cap Haitian center. The solar-powered lamps cover 1.5 miles of road, illuminate the doorsteps of homes and businesses and making the area safer for all (especially women and girls).

Also in May, you helped us open the (second) Malnutrition Treatment Center on our Saint Raphael Campus. After several long months of building up to this day—preparing the campus, readying the rooms, painting and landscaping, you helped us build beds and purchased supplies from our WishList to fills the center with supplies.

With the opening of our 2nd Malnutrition Treatment Center, we now manage the care of up to 42 acutely malnourished children at a time, in two locations—while coordinating medical consultations and follow-up for the hundreds of children who have come before.

This kept our team busy all 52 weeks of the year.

We helped more mothers start businesses, visited more families at their homes, and saw more smiles like these.

In July, we started the process of sending children back-to-school for the 2022-2023 school year. Many of you gave monthly school sponsorship donations, making it possible for kids like Naomi and Wilkendy (center) to enroll in school this year.

Though the school-year was delayed due to the instability Haiti faced this year, we are pleased to say that all school is in session!

It was amazing to give so many kids that beat the odds the opportunity to excel in school. The program grew from covering books and tuition for 80 children in 2021 to 142 in 2022.

All 142 of the sponsored, school children recovered from Acute Malnutrition at one of our centers in the last 9 years.

We continued our malnutrition prevention efforts by making maternal and newborn health services available to women all year long.

With weekly prenatal education classes attended by 100+ women each week, bi-monthly childhood immunization days attended by 70 parents and their infants each week…

With just under 2,000 new prenatal care visits and 10,298 total visits for prenatal, postnatal, and family planning.

652 women had their family planning needs exclusively met at our Cap Haitian and Saint Raphael centers.

We can’t forget to mention the amazing care you made possible for women and their families during the joys and challenges of childbirth! Our midwives stood with 725 mothers and their support people through labor with 678 births taking places at one of our birth centers.

The fuel crisis worsened through the months of July, August, September, and October—and just when we thought it couldn’t get much work we learned that new cases of the deadly cholera bacteria had surfaced in southern Haiti.

We jumped at this news—providing water filters to 510 families and making another 90 water filters available to other organizations for distribution in other parts of Haiti.

Each of our campuses stayed open throughout the turmoil.

Our gardens supplied food for the centers week after week, with trees for parents to plant at home, and food to share.

December isn’t over yet, but already it’s been one of the more eventful months of the year. After learning that there was a blood (and oxygen) shortage, we facilitated a blood drive.

Then we made improvements to the oxygen facility that generates oxygen for hundreds of thousands of people in Northern Haiti—now they operate for longer hours each day.

We did the Number Fundraiser and the Black Friday fundraiser and You. SHOWED. UP.

Your comments, shares, and emails made our year that much more special.

Thank you.

We ended 2021 with 51 staff members and we are ending this year with 64. —Nurses and Midwives, Psychologists and Educators—and you.

Thank you for making all of this possible this year.

There’s $13,665 left to raise in our year-end campaign.

And just a few days left in 2022.

We came in with a bang.

Can you send us out with one?

❤️

from Haiti