Partnering with the Community

Hello from Cap Haitien, where we are safe and well despite the ongoing danger in other parts of Haiti.

The news is sobering, but with so much to be done, we’re holding our heads high and holding onto hope for this country we love so much. 

Since we last wrote, our teams here in Cap Haitien and Saint-Raphael have been busy with two main priorities: 1) stocking up on supplies for and 2) tackling the problem of food insecurity the best way we know how.

If you’ve been reading for awhile, you know that we grow food on our campuses, keep fruit tree nurseries that we share from regularly, and that we help the mothers of children who have recently recovered from Malnutrition start garden collectives with their neighbors—sometimes travelling more than two hours by motorcycle to provide in-person support. 

But this past week we turned our attention to the people living right here in the communities we call home. 

On Monday & Tuesday, our agronomists and social workers left by bicycle and foot to meet with families in the communities where we work.

They came bearing gifts: spinach, tomato, pepper, & carrot seeds, plus watering cans and machetes to help community members tend to their young gardens. 

But they didn’t just leave their gifts and ride off to the next home! 

They stayed with every household offering manual support to form raised beds and get seeds in the ground.

This Tuesday, we turned our focus to the local school: Academie LEAD Haiti.

The school sits not more than 50 meters from our Cap Haitien Malnutrition Treatment Center. Currently, it’s a safe and well-equipped learning environment for 187 students, grades K-8.

After a few planning meetings with the school administrator (the man pictured in blue) we were ready for a hands on session with the students. 

Before we arrived, students and teachers had emptied the school house of all its benches and chairs in order to create an open air classroom. 

From there, Ange Marie, our lead agronomist, inspired children of all ages and every gender, to join in on the action.

After learning about the essential needs of a vegetable garden, the kids got to work breaking up the soil and forming raised beds… 

Wetting the soil…

planting and covering the seeds…

and once more, watering the seeds with water from the hand pump of the school grounds.

We left the school grounds already anticipating our next visit. Being just a short walk away, we’ll back to the school regularly to work with smaller groups of students at all stages of the gardens growth. 

There are more than 1 million people in Haiti facing famine levels of crisis and the effects of the crisis in Port-au-Prince is far-reaching. The suffering of those still in the midst of the violence is not far from our minds. 

But this day was happy one—full of hope for the day when these kids will get to harvest nutritious foods for their school lunches and carry the surplus home to their families.

❤️ love from Haiti

Miscellaneous Update

Hi friends! Happy September.

The last few weeks have been so beautifully full of activity that we missed writing to you last week.

We’re back today with a hodgepodge of updates

—updates you won’t want to miss! 

The month of August truly started with a bang with a successful annual Number Fundraiser—online and in-person in Texas!

Thanks to the support of so many of you, we have been able to increase the number of Malnutrition Center graduates who will have their school expenses covered by Second Mile this year.

The new list includes graduates of our Centers from the last 10 years who now range in age from 5 to 16—kids like Fridelove, who beat the odds and survived a battle with acute malnutrition in 2018, 5 years ago.

Fridelove is now 6 and entering the first grade.

Enrolling 150+ children means traveling to more than 80 different schools—all over Northern Haiti—to pay the school fees in person.

The logistics are challenging—especially since Haiti’s summer break is only 4 weeks long this year—but thanks to the depth and adaptability of our team we’re  getting it done. 😅

Two weeks ago we met with all the parents in a massive 3-day endeavor that involved eye and dental exams for 140 students. Today, parents are returning our Center to collect their child’s textbooks and workbooks for the year.

Today is also the day that the kids who needed them will be fitted for glasses! 

See we told you these updates would be exciting!

Meanwhile, at our Malnutrition Treatment Centers, children are recovering from Severe Acute Malnutrition, while their parents benefit from the many opportunities we offer as part Rehabilitation Program.

It brings us so much joy to see mothers, young and old, cultivating their dreams through art therapy…

taking home food from our campus gardens while preparing to start their own…

and starting businesses following their child’s recovery. 

Annelia is just one example of a mother who had no source of income when she arrived at the Center with her ailing son.

Now that her son, Lentz, is doing much better, she has been able to relaunch her business—something that she’s not sure would have been possible without Second Mile’s support. 

Islande, and her daughter, Tama, are another pair we were able to celebrate with this past month.

When Tama started her recovery from Severe Acute Malnutrition, she was 8-months-old and weighed only 6 lbs.

After a long, multi-month stay at our Malnutrition Treatment Center in Cap Haitien, we now see Islande and Tama at follow-up visits.

Baby Tama recently celebrated her 1st birthday much to the delight of her family and everyone here who played a role in her recovery.

Did we almost forgot to mention this month’s solar panel installation?

We did!

Since 2021, we’ve been working our way through the surrounding communities—installing batches of 20 solar-powered street lamps at a time—in hopes that soon, the entire area will benefit from the added security that light provides. 

These installations are always exciting. Inevitably, we pass community members who have their own stories to share about how the street lamps have made an impact on their lives.

From the teens that use them to study for exams to the hustling entrepreneurs who set up their soup and sandwich stands under the glow of the light—the impact continues to grow with each installation.

We’ve now installed more than 200 street lamps in the communities surrounding our two campuses in Northern Haiti. 

Finally, we can’t forget about pregnant women and their new babies!

We completed the Maternity Center Expansion, adding 3 rooms to care for more patients. We hired a new midwife and had a record-breaking month with births, prenatal visits, and education class attendance.

We still need a few more items to furnish the new rooms. Still, we welcomed 99 new babies between our two centers and cared for women during 1,480 prenatal, postpartum, and family planning visits.

And that’s a wrap!

As always, we are so grateful for you.

Thanks for standing with families in Haiti. 

Keep smiling!

Love from Haiti 🇭🇹

It's Time to Expand

Hello! And welcome back to Sixty Seconds with Second Mile.

We’re so glad you are here!

Have you enjoyed our stories from the early years?

We hope so.

We wanted to focus today on where that fateful first step has taken us. Specifically, to the eventual opening of not one but two Maternity Centers!

Have we told you the story that led us here?

Do you know the faces behind why it felt so urgent to figure out how to give more women good maternal health care.

It was this little one and others like him.

In 2016 and 2017, 20% of the children at the Malnutrition Treatment Center were being cared for by someone who was not their mother. We saw Aunts, Dads, Grandmas, Sisters, Cousins.

And while we loved to see these family members involved from such a early age, we had to investigate the underlying issue.

Mothers were dying in child birth. They were dying in the days and weeks after, and they were dying while pregnant from eclampsia and preeclampsia.

There was Philomene, a grandma of 62 years who came to the center with twin girls. Her daughter had no prenatal care and died after her birth. There was Ardiane whose daughter died just after her Grandson, Emmanuel was born. She came to the center with Emmanuel when he was 10-months-old.

There was Planika and her aunt, Suzanne. Planika was 5 when she came to the center. 4 years old when her mother died of eclampsia. Suzanne had to grieve the loss of her sister. Planika lost the baby sister she had been expecting. She lost her mother. And she became very, very sick.

We knew that maternal mortality was high in Haiti, 1 in 254 births led to a mother’s death. But then we surveyed our community and learned that only 2 in 10 women had a skilled birth attendant at their last birth.

Access to quality Maternal Care was a huge problem.

A problem that you’ve been helping us solve for 5 years now!

If you came to our Maternity Center today, you would have seen 75 women in line for Prenatal Education. On busy months, we have as many as 60 new babies born at the center. Yesterday, 107 parents travelled to the center for vaccination day with their newborns.

And lately, we’ve been seeing between 60-80 clients everyday for the rest of our services (prenatal care, postpartum care, and family planning)

We are quite literally busting open at the seams.

What’s that look like on a grand scale?

5,189 women have sought care at our this center since 2018.

Space is starting to become a huge problem. For the first time, we find ourselves having to limit the number of clients we can see each day. And closing the doors to new patients earlier and earlier each morning.

It would kill us to keep turning people away. Especially since there isn’t a comparable alternative.

So, it’s time to expand.

Did you guess what was coming next?

That’s right. We’re building.

How can you help?

We are going to need $40,000 to make sure that we don’t have to turn any one else away. We would like to start building as soon as possible. The plans are drawn and the builders are on call.

If we raised every dollar today, we could start tomorrow!

What exactly will an expansion look like?

It will look like more rooms so we can have more Midwives. And more comfortable spaces for people to sit while they wait.

A birth garden for laboring women and their support people. More space to move about.

A shaded seating areas outside the gate, for family members who attend the appointments & need a shady place to wait.

And it will look like more space for local entrepreneurs to make and sell food to the hundreds of people that come and go from the Maternity Center each day.

We’re very excited.

We have a generous donor who has committed to match every dollar donated to the building project over the next week.

Donations will be matched through May 31st.

Isn’t that wonderful?!

You’ve helped us build so many safe spaces. This will be no different.

Can you help us reach our goal before the 31st?

Love from Haiti 🇭🇹