By Karen Wienberg | Chair, Board of Directors
Although this school year will soon be drawing to a close and moving toward various Summer School pursuits and opportunities, we continue to gather supplies for next school year! Back-packs and other school supplies were gathered from numerous schools in Connecticut and medical supplies from surrounding hospitals and medical clinics by the wonderful folks at Move to Matter Organization. From there they were all transported to a sailboat in Florida, and once conditions were good, were sailed to Haiti for LFBS to pick up! We try to purchase as much of our goods in Haiti but some costs and item availability doesn't allow that. And, there are very few ways to actually get supplies to Haiti, so the folks that volunteer the use of their sailboats as they travel the Caribbean is so very important!
Medical patients of all ages are supported through our Outreach program to pediatric wards of local general hospital, home visits from our medical team and LFBS Medical Outreach Clinics. Along with the children in the villages and those in our care, we have children referred to us by IBESR (Haiti Social Services), Terre des Hommes, Ministry for Women's Rights, foreign doctors volunteering in the hospital, etc.
The continued growth in the children and youth’s confidence, skills and abilities in so many areas was clearly evident during recent Haitian Flag Day celebrations. Our staff spent the holiday hosting a party for a group of nearly 50 children and youth. Youth were involved in all areas of the event - presenting poetry and speeches about their country, singing songs and performing cultural dances!
Other clear signs of the growth and change underway was seeing some of our youth leaders joining in with the local Rotary Club reforestation efforts and others joining a girl’s soccer team. These are not pursuits they would have thought possible just a few years ago!
Ensuring continued team and capacity building, we undertook a brief trip to Ile a Vache for LFBS staff. We were able to visit, firsthand, the business start-up program our partners Haven Organization have created on the island, and also had the chance to do some team bonding and appreciate mother nature's beauty of their country.
LFBS Head of Operations, Morgan, and one of our Haitian staff traveled to Canada in April. While in Whitehorse, in Canada’s far northern territory of the Yukon, they met with supporters, spoke at Rotary Club meetings and schools and the videography team that will be producing a full feature documentary. Then on to Vancouver, British Columbia where Morgan was a key note speaker at Rose International Conference. The conference theme was Maintaining Compassion in a Fractured World. Morgan also led two breakout sessions focused on Cultural Competency and Sustainable Empowerment. Morgan was then key note speaker at Rotary District Conference in Michigan, where the organizers of that event noted that “We’ve never seen a speaker touch so many hearts as Morgan did today in all the years we have been attending conferences”.
A wonderful new partnership to assist with the nutritional needs has recently come from UBSuper Nutritonal products. These individual high protein and nutritionally supplemented packages are easy to transport and to use and can be distributed to our Outreach youth as well as used for our medical recovery support patients. We are excited about the difference this will make to the children and youth that we will be able to provide this to. Nutrition can make the difference not only between living and growing well, but also being able to learn well!
Sustainable nutrition is also the focus of our Agronomist as he works with families across the southwest villages. With crops once again growing following the devistation of Hurricane Matthew, we have been able to reintroduce livestock to our families there. We are so grateful for our committed staff who worked long hours over weekends to ensure families in the Grande Anse region received pairs of goats and the children had their school fees paid for the remainder of this school year! In April, we were thrilled to provide several reunited families in Pestel region with sheep. Once the animals have babies, the youth who received them will share their livestock with other families!
Thank you to our supporters for making this possible! Whose lives will you touch and change through your support and care? Follow us on Facebook at 'Little Footprints, Big Steps' and on our website at www.littlefootprintsbigsteps.com.
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