PLH Summer Kick Off Event in Stayton, OR

On June 23rd and 24th, PLH hosted its second annual Summer Kick Off sports camp in Stayton Oregon. Sixty kids from the community came out to participate in basketball, soccer, and volleyball training. The seven volunteer coaches from the community did a great job and the kids enjoyed learning about the game, improving their skills, and playing scrimmages at the end of the day. 

To close out the Summer Kick Off event, kids and adults from the community participated in a fun run on Saturday, June 25th. Many of the kids from the camp came out with their parents and many others from the community joined in. A total of fifty runners participated in the trail run through the Stayton Middle School Nature Trail. Congratulations to Tyler Franklin, the overall winner of the 5k race! 

The goal of the sports camp and fun run is to provide a fun experience for kids and families in our local community and to spread the word of the work PLH is doing in Haiti. PLH believes that sports and opportunities to play and learn are hugely influential in the lives of young people. This is why one of PLH’s four areas of focus is athletics. 

Thanks to generous sponsors and the registration fees of participants that paid it forward, the Summer Kick Off raised $1,500 to go towards the PLH summer kids programs in Haiti! This July and August, the PLH Haiti staff is organizing 8 weeks of soccer tournaments, English classes, artisan classes, soap making classes and more for kids and youth in the Camp Marie community. These programs will provide kids with a safe place to come play, learn and grow this summer. Stay tuned for updates later this summer!

PLH Summer Kick Off

By Sarah Comstock

Project Living Hope’s mission is to empower Haitians to build a stronger Haiti, so why run a sports camp in Stayton and a fun run in Sublimity? Really, it is all about engaging with our community. Not everyone is able to travel with us to Haiti, but we hope all our Champions can engage with the mission of PLH.  One of PLH’s focus areas is athletics. Through athletics we offer children and youth a safe environment where they can play, grow, and be trained holistically in their faith, sport, and future. In the United States we often take for granted the opportunity for our children to participate in athletic programs. But, in Haiti, children typically do not have those same opportunities. Extracurricular activities are a luxury that few can afford, which means many children and adolescents fall prey to gangs or other harmful choices.

This past year has taught us all in the US to stop taking these opportunities for granted as well. So, when PLH started to see that there may be an opening in our hometown to engage the community, we decided to offer a sports camp for local kids, like we do in Haiti. For three days, June 23rd to the 25th we had over 120 kids out to the Foothills Church camp for 3 and a half hours of sports and fun! Kids were just getting out of school for the summer and we took this as an opportunity to show our home base how we work in Haiti.

Fortunately, we had a team of volunteers to help us bring this opportunity to our community. Thank you so much to Bill Pilgeram and Taylor Kelly head women’s and men’s basketball coaches from Corban, Tyler Butenscheon from Foothills and our very own Bethany Ferrigno who served as head basketball coaches for the camp! Thanks also to Jess Caze FSF Instructor from Oregon State and Jason Clark PE Teacher from Santiam Elementary School who served our local youth in our soccer program.

It was such a fun week.  We had about 80 kids in our basketball program and 40 in our soccer program.  Plus, another 30 volunteers gave of their time to help with this effort!  Each kid got to develop their skills at various stations led by leaders in the sport. They had snacks, free time and some fun doing Haitian inspired crafts. Amy Bentz our creative Communications Coordinator led the kids in crafts that helped them understand more of life in Haiti.  The soccer kids made cardboard cutout shin guards and were informed about how kids in Haiti are unable to afford nice things like store bought shin guards and soccer cleats, but they make do. The basketball kids got to make a ping-pong basketball craft that allowed them to see that kids with limited means can still do things to have fun. At the end of the week we even had special visitors from the Timbers U23 team!

We ended the Summer Kick Off camp with a fun run on Saturday, June 26th in Sublimity. About 100 community members participated in the first PLH 3K and 5K Fun Run and Walk. We took off at 9 am and it was already a record setting 80 degrees! By the time the run was done we were nearing 90 degrees in one of the hottest weekends on record in Oregon. Not surprisingly, our first-place finisher in the 5K was our very own Guesly Dessieux. Maybe the “Haitian” weather helped propel him along?

We had many sponsors and volunteers that helped make both events possible. Overall, we were able to raise about $2,000 to put on the same events in Haiti. We plan to run a sports camp like the one we ran in Stayton and will do a fun run on the road to our property. This will be our second fun run in Haiti. Ultimately our goal was connection: connecting our Oregon community with our Haitian community.  We believe this goal was accomplished. Our Stayton and Sublimity partners know more about the work in Haiti and their generosity has helped empower Haitians to build a stronger Haiti.  Thank you to all who helped make this possible!

Right now, we are running the annual Join the Community campaign. This campaign invites you to join the PLH community by becoming a monthly donor. Monthly giving fuels the programs and projects that provide hope to the community in challenging times. Just $15 a month helps to:

• Educate current and future professionals by providing English classes and other job skills programs.

• Empower youth by providing soccer and basketball programs that holistically train athletes in faith, sport, and future.

• Employ staff and construction workers with jobs to provide for their families.

• Expand the campus to better serve the community.

Thank you for your continued prayers, support, and partnership. 

MISSION EXPERIENCE UPDATES: SOCCER AND BASKETBALL TRAINING

In the midst of all the news about construction and the launching of our youth soccer program, we also had two teams visit Camp Marie to train soccer and basketball coaches.  Here is a brief synopsis of each trip.

Soccer

By Collin Box

January 2019

We started with seven of us driving to PDX in the pounding rain with 11 full-sized bags full of soccer equipment, not including our personal items. After nearly 24 hours, picking up other team members from Eugene, Colorado, and Kansas, we made it to our home for the next week just outside Camp Marie. The home was a hostel of sorts with 35 beds, of which our team took up 11, along with our driver, security and 10 Haitian coaches from Port-au-Prince who were there for the coaches training.

After catching up on some rest and settling in, we went to church in Montroius (pronounced Mowi) on Sunday morning. I had been to this church one year before, and as we sat on the hard wooden benches in the back of the concrete church building, Benedic, who I had met last year, opened the service.

After he said something in Kreyol, we began to sing. The highlight was a line from one of the songs - “Li Kapab” - He is able. The phrase stuck with me throughout the week.

After the service, we visited the Project Living Hope Property, had lunch, and then decided to head out to the field in Montrouis for a soccer game against the locals. This was by far the best American team I’ve played with down in Haiti, but the terrain still made it difficult. The game finished 3-0 in our favor.

Our coaches training began the following morning and would continue through Friday. We had about 35 coaches at the training. In the morning, we met in a small church building right next to the road. Guesly brought a battery powered projector that allowed Aaron Lewis and myself to show some slides and video each day. We also were equipped with two 18”x24” white boards and a bag of mostly dried out markers. We had a classroom session assisted by several translators, and then spent part of our time on the basketball court across the street demonstrating drills. Intermixed with our coach education were some powerful devotionals and trainings on how to be a “coach de vie” - a life coach. The intention of Project Living Hope is to utilize soccer as a means to create community and make disciples. These trainings were provided by both Guesly and Thonny.

After lunch inside the church (which was getting pretty hot by that time), we had the coaches plan their session in small groups before heading over to the soccer field at the Project Living Hope property just down the road. We walked the mile down the newly completed road, side-by-side with the Haitian coaches as they offered us free Kreyol lessons. We also seemed to accumulate kids everywhere we walked. One of the days, I was walking towards a girl who must have been two years old as she announced over and over again, “Blanc! blanc! blanc! blanc!” (White, white, white, white!)

After school got out, the kids began to arrive. We had around 200 kids by the end of the week, who were divided into smaller group. The Haitian coaches took the lead as we gave a little advice and simply participated alongside. It is amazing how quickly relationships can happen with a ball at your feet.

My biggest takeaways from the week:

1. After coming for the first time to this community last year, it was incredible to see the amount of progress that has been made. One year ago we did our first coaches training in the area, had our first English classes, didn’t have a field to play on, and PLH did not have any staff living in the area. One year later, they have a soccer field, a road, weekly English classes for three different levels, four local staff coaches, two administrators, a land manager, a U23 league, and a youth soccer program. There are some great people on the board at PLH, but it is apparent to me that God is behind this and is very active in the community. The people are excited, and the culture is already changing.

2. I was really impacted by the relationships we formed with the Haitian coaches and staff that we stayed with. I had met some of them before, but this time I felt like we really got to be with them and understand their way of life more than ever before.

3. There was one night in particular where we were back at the house after a long day of soccer. After dinner, we had a devotional that Josh Noonkester led. Then one of the Haitian coaches spoke up and called out in front of everyone else, “Two of you are here who are not followers of Jesus. How can you claim to be a ‘life coach’ if you don’t know the One you are leading them to?” These two coaches then proceed to, in front of all 30 of us, tell everyone their reasons for not following Jesus and then both asked us to pray for them because they wanted to do so. It was a special night.

Thank you to all of you for your prayers and support. It was a blessing to go and play a small part in helping empower Haitians to build a better Haiti.

To read more about the soccer mission experience here is a blog post written by Ryan Botkin who served on the team.

Basketball

By Tyler Butenscheon

March 2019

Empowering Haitians to Build a Stronger Haiti is the heartbeat of PLH. I saw this in right before my eyes on a trip to Camp Marie, Haiti in March. Every morning trained coaches were taught, encouraged and then released to lead their own kids basketball camp in the afternoon. Can empowerment be effective with that short of a turnaround? The answer is a resounding yes. 

We had dozens and dozens of coaches that came out each day to the community basketball court right in the center of town. At the end of our training we had 35 coaches receive a coaching certificate. These are the coaches that were with us every day. They listened, worked hard and implemented our skills and leadership principles. Beyond that we had dozens of more coaches and community members who came out to watch and learn about basketball and PLH for one or more of our training days.  

Because of the draw of our coaches camp there were a couple of great scrimmage games that we got to be part of. One was the American coaches verses the Haitian coaches. The Haitians loved seeing how they matched up with us. Their skills are still developing but their athleticism and tenacity are phenomenal. The other game was two local adult Haitian teams that squared off against one another. This second match brought people out from everywhere in Camp Marie. The sidelines were filled with people 3 deep trying to get eyes on the game as we simply provided referees and cheered them on. What a beautiful site it was to see how sport can bring a community together and build relationships. 

Part of our training with the coaches each day was an opportunity to remind them just how important the afternoon would be as they coached and led the kids camp. Sure, we taught them some fundamentals of the game (dribbling, passing, shooting, defense, rebounding, etc). And yes, we coached them in how to run drills to help kids practice and develop those skills in fun ways. But beyond that, and more importantly, we emphasized over and over how these coaches weren’t just coaching kids in a sport but they had opportunities to coach kids in life. They had the opportunity to empower the next generation to be the leaders necessary to change the course of Haiti. They had a platform to show the love of God and share the gospel of Christ. 

We were amazed each afternoon as the coaches stepped up and led the kids camp. All in all there were 80-100 kids throughout the week who were led by these newly trained coaches. The coaches were passionately engaged in their interactions with kids. They were nurturing in their approach. They were wonderful examples of sportsmanship and hard work. Ultimately, they were great examples of Jesus to their players. The highlight of the kids camp was when the coaches specifically paused to gather the kids and teach them about Jesus. It wasn’t forced or awkward. It was simply coaches who were empowered and passionate about their first love, Jesus, and sharing him unashamedly. It was a beautiful site to see.  

Athletics is one of 4 main areas we focus our work at PLH. We say, "Lives of young people can be drastically changed for the good when they become involved in an excellent, Christ-centered sports program.” We saw truth that first hand. We witnessed relationships blossom. We saw confidence rise. We experienced the love God among people. Basketball was the bridge we used to aide these endeavors. As one coach put it after receiving his certificate, “Thank you. You changed my life."

To read more about the basketball mission experience here is a blog post written by Jacob Biviano who served on the team.

Much More Than Basketball

Every week on the Haitian Christian Mission campus, youth are connecting with each other and with Christian mentors around the games of soccer and basketball through the Play It Forward sports program.  Earlier this month, four guys from Oregon had the opportunity to take part in that program, both teaching and learning as they went along.  Levi Wilson and Ben Comstock along with Levi's son Cameron and Ben's son Droiy traveled down to Haiti with the intention of helping train basketball coaches and lead basketball camp.  While there, they learned that the week was about much more than basketball.

Each day they met with about 30 coaches on the porch of the Haitian Christian Mission guesthouse.  Thonny Fabien, director of Play It Forward, started off each session with 1-2 hours of leadership training, a key element of his program.

After that, Ben and Levi had the opportunity to train the coaches for a few hours both at their desks and on the court.  One day they spent several hours teaching about calls and refereeing.  

Then each afternoon they had around 20 Play It Forward players come for basketball camp.  During the camp, many of the coaches jumped in and helped with the kids.  Ben and Levi took down 100 reversible blue and white jerseys for the coaches to use in their programs.  They make it easy to form two teams and start a game.  

They were also able to take down 60 pairs of donated basketball shoes, including 30 brand new pairs donated by Nike.  These shoes will belong to Play It Forward and the staff will distribute them to all players before games.  That way, students eager to improve as players will always have shoes to wear on the court.  The team also brought down 50 basketballs that were distributed to the coaches.

"Coaching and playing basketball was a lot of fun for the kids, for the coaches, and for us," Ben explains, "but this week was about much more than basketball. It was about creating relationships and equipping the Haitian coaches with the leadership skills needed to make an impact with kids back in their own communities."  Ben and Levi got to see firsthand just what the purpose of Play It Forward is.

"Thonny is doing amazing work with the kids and coaches. It is evident that he is loved and respected by everyone that he is in contact with," Ben shares.  Levi adds, "He commands respect from every Haitian I saw him interact with. He is extremely genuine, intelligent, and focused without having any air of self-absorption. This is one of the highest caliber men I've met in my life."

The Play It Forward program has already had a positive impact in Haiti and that will continue behind leaders like Thonny.  You are helping make this possible through partnering with Project Living Hope.

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