Haiti Hurricane Matthew Rebuilding Homes & Lives

It’s now been six months since Hurricane Matthew struck Haiti. Thank you so much for your generous support for families on Lagonav Island as they recover from the storm.

As a reminder, your generous support is helping 230 families that Beyond Borders is working with in nine rural communities on Lagonav, and you can see those communities on this Google Map.

Families have weekly visits from family life coaches who focus on training and reinforcement of critical topics ranging from nutrition, to health and sanitation, to small business management, to animal husbandry.

Here’s an update on those trainings and the progress that families are making thanks to you and your generosity.

Health

Along with rebuilding homes after the hurricane, Beyond Borders committed to ensuring that every family has proper sanitation. Nearly every destitute family that is being reached by this effort practiced open defecation because they lacked the means to construct even a simple latrine.

Waterborne disease is a leading killer in Haiti, especially among children. So, a portion of your support is allowing us to dig and build a sanitary latrine for each family. The new latrines greatly reduce the risk of contracting a gastrointestinal illness or a deadly bacterial disease like cholera.

Families are making regular use of the water filter that your gift helped make possible immediately after the storm, and, thanks to regular accompaniment from Beyond Borders, families understand how critically important it is to use the filter at all times to prevent waterborne diseases.

Thanks to generous donors like you, families attend weekly trainings conducted by Beyond Borders that cover a variety of health topics, including:

• Health care before and after birth
• Sanitation and latrines
• Parasites
• Vitamins
• Vaccinations
• Signs and treatment of malnutrition

Hunger

Having a more secure income -- which we’ll talk about below -- allows families to enjoy a greater variety of food and a more balanced overall diet. This leads to improved health, lower medical expenses and less time lost from school for their children.  

Hunger, which was a constant reality for the most families before and immediately after the hurricane, is a thing of the past now, thanks to donors like you. Parents tell us they no longer worries that their family won't have enough food in the house or that they might go without food completely for a time.

The weekly stipend that families received for the first six months after the storm helped ensure that they didn’t go hungry. Now, they are earning money to support themselves, thanks to the kinds of income-generating activity that your gift supports (see below for more on this).

Economic Livelihoods

Having begun with little or nothing after the storm, families are working with their life coach to identify and track specific, achievable economic goals, such as developing savings to purchase and raise goats, or raising and selling piglets from a pregnant sow, for example, so that later they can invest in an animal of greater value, like a mule or a cow. Another economic activity families engage in involves buying ingredients in larger quantities so that they can make and sell a special Haitian confection that is made with locally harvested peanuts and shredded coconuts.

Building on economic success is a huge boost to a family’s self-confidence and self-esteem within their community. This self confidence is a vital resource that will sustain them as they face future challenges.

Families meet regularly with other sponsored families to allow them to encourage one another and to build bonds of solidarity that will help sustain them after they complete the program. Each family continues to invest some of their savings in community-based collective savings groups. These collective savings groups not only promote solidarity among neighbors, but also provide each family with a greater measure of security that they never had before. It provides a resource in case of an emergency and helps families to increase their purchasing power to be able to invest in and grow their young businesses.

Thank you again, for your generosity, your care, and your concern. Through your gift, you are giving families devastated after Hurricane Matthew a path to a much brighter future, filled with dignity, hope, and opportunity.