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 ABOVE BAR CHURCH HELPING HAITI REBUILD INTRODUCTION A history of slavery, exploitation and dictatorship has paved the way for Haiti to become the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Before the 2010 earthquake, 77 per cent of the ten million population of Haiti were living in poverty. The disaster entrenched that as well as claiming 300,000 lives and destroying 293,000 homes. Tearfund has been working in Haiti for three decades. Nearly four years after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti, many people are still rebuilding their lives. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes and the little they had. The country has been slowly recovering but many are still trapped in poverty. YOUR SUPPORT When the earthquake struck in Haiti in 2010, Above Bar Church responded and gave generously to Tearfund’s disaster appeal which supported our initial response in Haiti, providing food and shelter, supporting Cash For Work schemes and other critical immediate interventions. Following this, Above Bar Church have continued to support Tearfund’s Partners as they have worked in Haiti to meet the greatest needs in the country, to rebuild after the earthquake and to support the people of Haiti as they strive to lift themselves out of poverty. Your generosity and that of the community in Southampton has raised huge amounts through the 2012, 2013 and 2014 Christmas appeals. ● In 2012, £12,086.56 went to support Tearfund's post-earthquake response work in Haiti. ● In 2013, £10,412.30 supported World Relief Haiti’s support programme for Mothers, Orphans and Vulnerable Children at risk of, or affected by, HIV. ● This Christmas in 2014, Above Bar Church have again been raising money for World Relief’s vital work in Haiti. Your support will make the transformational Church Mobilisation Programme possible; helping churches in Haiti apply the scriptures to their lives and respond to the needs of the poorest among them in sustainable ways. POST EARTHQUAKE RESPONSE As a single mum, Rosite had it tough in Haiti before the 2010 earthquake but the disaster made matters far worse. Her home was flattened by the tremors and within minutes Rosite and her three children were left homeless in the isolated mountain community of Barriere Jeudi, a couple of hours from the earthquake’s epicentre. The search for shelter and security became Rosite’s top priority and meant she had to give up selling cooked food, her main source of income. GOAT GIVEAWAY Rosite’s vulnerability made her a prime case for support from Tearfund and she was enrolled in our livelihood support programme. She was given goats which through breeding and selling the offspring provide vital income, enabling her to begin rebuilding her home and to pay for her children’s education. MY SITUATION IS CHANGING NOW WITH THESE GOATS. THEY’LL HELP ME A LOT ROSITE Altogether 2,026 goats have been distributed by Tearfund to vulnerable Haitians, more than half of them women. Tearfund worked with 500 women like Rosite, many living in very isolated communities that had been severely affected by the earthquake. The women also took part in training on goat-rearing and how to be prepared for disasters. BACK TO SCHOOL The impact of the earthquake on the children of Haiti was immense. Over 4,000 schools were damaged or destroyed. Getting Haiti’s children back to school was a key part of Tearfund’s post-quake response. Tearfund built 118 disaster-resistant transitional classrooms at 40 schools, supplied furniture and provided 32,000 school bags for returning children. Permanent schools were put up too, built to higher standards so they were more able to withstand future earthquakes. ‘We used to have classes in the open air with no shelter from the rain,’ said school teacher Elidonne Augustin at the Ecole Nouvelle Vie de Demier near Citronnier, proudly surveying the new primary school built by Tearfund which has four classrooms, a latrine block and a rainwater collection tank. CHOLERA When a cholera outbreak swept across Haiti and claimed thousands of lives, the need for health education and basic water and sanitation infrastructure became starker than ever. With support from Tearfund partners, we reached 120,000 adults and children in three provinces, raising awareness of the disease and providing water purification products. HIV SUPPORT World Relief has been working in Haiti for many years. When they first began to work in the Pot-au-Prince slums in 1996, most mothers did not have an option to provide their children with clinical care. In 2013, your support helped World Relief Haiti’s work to support expectant mothers and newborns, Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs) and those affected by HIV. MATERNAL CHILD HEALTH (MCH) Almost 10 million children under five die every year – mostly from preventable causes. With your support World Relief taught people in Haiti how to stay healthy in pregnancy, childbirth and how to look after newborns. Training programmes were run to demonstrate that simple steps could save children’s lives. Pastors were invited for training sessions with the aim to educate them on the importance of MCH and their response was phenomenal. Health delegates (champions for the projects in their local churches) were chosen and they took part in many support activities to develop their skills and capacity. Topics covered included childhood vaccinations, diarrhoea and oral rehydration therapy, nutrition, family planning, pregnancy and breast-feeding, hygiene principles and STIs. Volunteers ran free pop-up clinics all across the communities they worked in. They have helped thousands of mothers and children. Babies were fully immunized and children completed their cycles of vaccination. Women received tetanus immunisations and many were screened for cervical cancer. Over 2,000 women started using at least one method of family planning as a result of the volunteers’ work. ORPHANS AND VULNERABLE CHILDREN (OVC) World Relief programmes have been reaching out to vulnerable children; children who may have been deeply scarred not just by poverty, but also by exploitation and abandonment. With your support and a holistic educational approach, within the framework of the local church, the OVC programmes have sought to help many children who are left to provide for and protect themselves. Children received psychosocial, health care and educational, support. Counselling sessions, distribution of toys and behavioural change workshops have all been part of the project’s success. Some of the most serious problems diagnosed and addressed through your support were: childhood depression, learning disabilities, anxiety and lack of self-esteem. As well as being in part therapeutic, the workshops on glass and fabric painting equipped the children with additional skills that could help them later in life should they choose to become artisans. Other activities over the year, aimed at teenagers, included reading workshops, Bible meditation, conferences and debates on issues such as sexuality, film screenings, theatre performances, sports and counselling. These were organised on a weekly basis with youth from 12 to 18 years old. Thanks to your support of the project, OVCs have followed a computer training course and were trained on Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power point as well as having an introduction to the internet. HIV SUPPORT World Relief is committed to working through the church to create a safety net of hope and compassion for those who suffer with HIV and AIDS and their families. Programmes have made great strides in Haiti to combat discrimination of those affected by HIV/AIDS by equipping church leaders and mobilizing church congregations. Your support helped churches set up support groups and teams to provide home-based care for those without family or too weak to care for themselves that continue today. MOBILISING THE CHURCH The church has been involved in restoring Haiti and is ideally placed to do even more in 2015. With your help, more churches can be envisioned, trained and empowered to lift their surrounding communities out of poverty. World Relief are helping local churches to work together with their community to address their biggest needs using their own resources. They are doing this through a dynamic Bible-based and empowering approach called UMOJA (Swahili for 'Togetherness'), which has brought remarkable transformation to local churches and their communities around the world. After many years of success in some African countries, a pilot project was started in Haiti in 2011, through the partners and friends of Tearfund. In a country such as Haiti, where people are so used to aid handouts, we see this as pivotal to breaking the cycle of poverty in the long term. As Bill Hybels said, ‘the local church is the hope of the world’. With your help, more churches can be trained and empowered to lift their surrounding communities out of poverty, restoring dignity and helping families rebuild their lives. The UMOJA process is based on nine (9) key principles that guide its actions and strategies. These are: the principle of facilitation, biblical foundation, church leadership, relationship building, empowerment, participation, openness, self-financing and sustainability. These principles form the context/background for the sustainability of the approach. PROJECT IMPACT ●
9 coordinators and 40 facilitators will be trained in UMOJA, equipping them with the skills required and understanding the enormous impact they can have in achieving change ●
A minimum of 30 churches will be envisioned and mobilised to work with their communities to unlock their God-given potential and bring about lasting change. ●
20,000 church members will be encouraged to reach the lives of people around them. ●
50,000 community members could be released from poverty as a result of UMOJA training. BUDGET ●
£5,230 will cover the salary of a national UMOJA coordinator who will play a central role in inspiring and equipping churches to transform their communities ●
£1,140 will pay for the crucial documents needed to run the UMOJA course ●
£3,900 will cover the costs of a workshop which will train local churches on lifting communities out of poverty ●
£570 will pay for a follow-up meeting where the progress of individual churches and their projects can be monitored and improved