Through All Of This, There Is One Thing That Gives Us Hope

By Laura Polynice (Nott)

“Nou bouke,” (We’re tired) has long been the cry of the people of Haiti – since the 2010 earthquake, through the 2019 unrest which shut down the country for three months and into this current season of gang violence and insecurity. This past month has been a particularly tiring one for the nation. Then this morning, Haiti awoke to the news of the death of the president. 

Earlier this morning, President Jovenel Moise was assassinated at his home. The First Lady was taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds. The death of the president throws Haiti into a new chapter of the unknown. The constitution states that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is to be the successor; however, he passed away of covid two weeks ago and his funeral was scheduled for today. It is hard to predict what will happen in the coming days and months. All we can say is Haiti needs our prayers. The country is suffering.

An anonymous woman who heard the shots summarized much of the population’s feelings well when she said, “The president had problems with many people, but this is not how we expected him to die. This is something I wouldn’t wish on any Haitian.” (CNBC)

June was a tough month for Haiti. We are in the middle of the rainy season, but while the rain falls and the gardens grow, the country of Haiti is struggling to hold on. Gang activity is on the rise throughout the greater metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince. Some communities have had to leave their areas due to gang violence. Some hospitals and organizations have been forced to vacate their facilities for the time being, out of concern for the safety of their employees and those they serve. The Haitian police have insufficient resources, training, and support. Meanwhile, covid, though relatively mild in Haiti during 2020, has seen an increase in cases. We are beginning to hear of more sickness around the country and in our area. Prices are continuing to rise. Fuel shortages are becoming more common and lasting longer. There have been two fatal boat accidents in our area impacting our coastal community. Then last weekend, a chartered plane crashed and claimed the lives of the six people on board, who had decided to fly in order to avoid travelling through an area made nearly impassible due to gang activity. Thankfully, hurricane Elsa did not hit Haiti hard, though the south did have some flooding and loss of crops. The population is discouraged and frustrated over the economic, political and gang situations in Haiti and the loss of innocent lives. The cry of the people has been, “Nou bouke.” “We’re tired.”

Through all of this, there is one thing that gives us hope: God, our heavenly father who we know loves Haiti. He may not bring peace and prosperity to this country today or tomorrow, but through it all, we know He is with us. Deuteronomy 31:8 says, “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” He calls us to continue to serve those in front of us and to do the work entrusted to us. He asks us to encourage and lift up one another. He commands us to pray for our neighbors and our enemies alike.

PLH continues to do the work God has put in front of us. While most of our English classes are on summer vacation, two that started mid-year continue to meet. The soccer fields and basketball court host casual play and organized scrimmages in the evenings when the weather is cooler. It is encouraging to see soccer players arriving by truck and by foot for scrimmages or to hear the bounce of basketballs until well after dark. Sports truly are an outlet. Amongst all the stresses of the world, PLH is a place where youth can come to play, relax, grow, learn, and challenge one another. The PLH staff are working to make repairs to the road and finish the bathrooms so the campus can be better accessible and equipped to host events and activities. We hope to have everything ready to host special activities in August.

It may be difficult to see in the middle of so much suffering, but we know that God has big plans for this community and this country.

How can you help?

Pray. Please pray for the population of Haiti that has faced decades of hardships. Pray for families that dream of a better life for their children. Pray for workers, national and foreign, that continue to do the work God has placed before them. Pray for those behind the violence and corruption. God has the power to change hearts. Pray that this next chapter in Haiti brings good leaders and positive change.

Give. It feels strange to ask for money on a day like today, but the truth is, now more than ever, Haiti needs the training, employment and hope that organizations like PLH bring. 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. 

HAITI CRISIS RELIEF EFFORT

Project Living Hope exists to empower Haitians to build a stronger Haiti and does this through athletics, job skill training, community development, and disaster preparedness. The political unrest over the last few months has led to a major humanitarian crisis where people are struggling to feed their families.  Food prices have increased a great deal and the value of the Haitian currency has dropped. People have been unable to work and students have been unable to go to school. As a result, we are not exaggerating when we say people are going whole days without eating.

Over the last few weeks, we have continued to have regular meetings with our staff and leaders in Camp Marie and they have assessed the needs within the community. Our Camp Marie Operational Manager, Benedic Maxime, met with the pastors of the nine churches in Camp Marie and he heard the same thing over and over. All are discouraged about the current state of Haiti as they say the political situation is leading to a severe food storage and inability for people to work. All expressed a strong desire for people to work and have a purpose. The majority of Haitain people have no control over the current political situation or the protests that have been shutting down the country since early September. 

As a response to this crisis, Project Living Hope has devised a multi-faceted relief strategy. Our mission is to empower, not to enable or create dependency. This is why we choose to offer short-term relief in times of crisis by empowering individuals and partnering with churches within the community. We have devised the following strategies. 

1. Emergency Food Relief: We will partner with the local churches of Camp Marie to help with emergency food assistance. The nine local churches will organize the purchasing and distributing of food to those who need it most. 

2. Planting for Tomorrow: We will invest in local farmers to help bolster the agricultural efforts within the community. This food crisis has the potential to increase over the coming months, so creating opportunities for the Haitian people to grow more will empower them to sustain themselves through this challenging time. 

3. Youth Programs: We will hire a few individuals who have participated in PLH’s English and athletics training programs to hold camps for the kids in the community. All schools are closed due to the country shutdown. These English, basketball, and soccer camps will offer kids a fun, positive activity to participate in. 

4. Employment: We will create as many short-term work opportunities as our land projects allow, hiring local people to cut brush, clear fence lines, and clear out drainage ditches. 

We would like to invite you to join us in providing short-term relief to the community of Camp Marie. Would you consider giving a financial gift to support these four efforts?

We will be running this campaign for the next ten days. Please consider sharing this need with your friends, family, and church, and keep an eye out for an update from us as we close out the campaign November 25th. 

Your gift makes an impact!

• $50 empowers a Camp Marie church to feed a family for a week.

• $100 plants a crop of beans.

• $250 sends kids to learn English, basketball or soccer.

• $600 employs a crew of locals to complete a land project.

Thank you for being a champion of Haiti and the community of Camp Marie and empowering locals to press on during this difficult time. Please continue to keep Haiti in your prayers.  

“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Matthew 25:40

Pray for Haiti

by Sara Dessieux

PLH Board Member and Founder

Life in Haiti often feels like one step forward followed by one step back.  Making progress in Haiti is so difficult.  But currently, we are seeing Haiti taking huge stumbles backwards with no steps forward.  Recurrent fuel shortages have turned into a fuel crisis that seems to be the new normal.  Constant political protests and roadblocks not only disrupt everyday life, but also turn into violent events in which vehicles and businesses are burned and lives are endangered.  Not only has the value of Haiti’s currency plummeted over the last year but prices for food and other necessities have dramatically increased.  Then things just snowball from there.  

Many kids have yet to start school this year.  People cannot find work.  Even people with money in the bank and family members overseas who can transfer money for them have limited access to cash.  Everyone struggles to find means of transportation.  People with cars and motorcycles stay for hours in line and often still aren’t able to buy fuel.  Fuel is sold out of barrels on the black market for as much as $10/gallon ‒ four times the standard price.  In a country where very little electricity comes through the power lines and people depend heavily on generators, everyone is left in the dark.  Hospitals have to shut their doors and the sick, injured and pregnant struggle even more than usual to find medical care.  And our dear little island nation seems bent on self-destructing.

We were supposed to be in Haiti right now.  Our family had plane tickets to fly down two weeks ago.  Yet here we are in Oregon, and nearly every day one of our kids asks us when we’re going to Haiti.  And we say, “Not yet.  There is still too much trouble going on in Haiti.”  We want our kids to keep loving Haiti and not be afraid of it, so we don’t go into much more detail than that.  Then we run into friends around town or at church and they too ask, “When are you going to Haiti?”  We give them a few more details but still the same answer, we don’t know. 

Guesly and I ache to be back in Haiti, as does my sister, Laura, who has been living down there for more than a year but who came to Oregon to speak for our fundraising event.  We long to see our friends and staff, launch another soccer season, work with our English students, and help Project Living Hope keep taking steps forward.  Yet our sadness about not getting to be down in Haiti is nothing compared to the sadness we feel when we think about all that is going on there.  

What is behind all of this?  Oh, how I wish I knew the full answer to this.  All we can do is make our own evaluations based on the information we have gathered through reading and talking with people.  When asked to explain any of Haiti’s problems to someone, I always start with, “It’s complicated.”  Every issue is so multi-faceted and has so much history behind it.  If I had to sum it up in one word, it would be “corruption.” There is a whole bunch of it and everyone knows it, but it’s still hard to know who the most and the least corrupt players are.  That’s the trouble with the current political situation.

A news article in the Miami Herald this weekend proclaimed, “Thousands Rally in Haiti Against President Moise.”  But I’d say, “Millions in Haiti Struggle to Go About Daily Life as a Small Percentage of People Call For the Elected President to Resign.”  Maybe the president is guilty of corruption, I don’t know, but some of the senators definitely are.  They have refused to sit down with the president and they are encouraging the lawless behavior of the protesters, most of whom are unemployed young men who are grasping for any form of control and power they can find, which in this case, is ruining others.

Photo source: Miami Herald

How is all of this impacting Project Living Hope?  Our community in Camp Marie has stayed peaceful, and our staff continues to frequent the PLH property and keeps us informed about all happenings. We planned to be well into the second season of the PLH youth soccer league by now, but since people can hardly get around, that has been postponed.  The new year of English classes was supposed to launch September 16, the same time this current round of trouble began. With the teachers and many students unable to get to class, we have had to postpone that as well. We will all be so happy when games and classes start up again!  We become more convinced all the time that Project Living Hope is on the right track.  

Young people need a purpose, they need community, they need moral standards, and they need Jesus.  They also need education and employment.  We know that empowering Christian Haitian leaders to effectively reach the young people and families around them is what we want to stay focused on.  Haiti is actually full of innovative, hardworking, and compassionate young people who want to see their country grow stronger.  We just want to help form more people like that to tip the scale away from this cycle of turmoil that Haiti has been stuck in.  

Eventually, somehow or another, Haiti will calm down again.  And then we will get back to work there.  Thank you for believing in the work of Project Living Hope and thank you for caring about Haiti. The Haitian people need you to remember them right now and they need you to pray for them.

PRAY FOR HAITI AND AN END TO PROTESTS

Thank you for your support of Project Living Hope and the Haitian people.  We wanted to give you a brief update about the PLH construction work in Haiti and some of the events that have been happening in the country over the last few weeks.

We started the first phase of construction on our property at the beginning of February. Even though there were some setbacks, we had an incredibly successful first week.  We will be posting a second blog post with updates about the construction in a few days. We will have some great stories to share with you! Unfortunately, we were not able to proceed with the second week of work due to the continued national fuel shortage and protests that broke out throughout the country.  This cut off our supply of fuel to power our equipment and made it difficult for the organization housing our team to power their generators or replenish food and water supplies. We made the difficult call to halt the construction project until things return to normal and brought our excavation team members home to the US.  We are so thankful for the work that was completed, the commitment of the volunteers, and the safe journeys home.

Haiti has been experiencing inflated prices, fuel shortages, a drop in the value of the Haitian currency, and a lack of confidence in the government. This, along with opposing political parties trying to get back into power, led to 10 days of nationwide protests and roadblocks, beginning February 7th. The people are tired -- tired of living with a bad economy, government corruption, and roadblocks and protests. But it is not the general population that protests in the streets and causes roadblocks. These are mainly young, unemployed men who have been hired to shut down Haitian life to push an agenda. Workers sit at home losing their much needed pay, students miss days of school, hospitals run out of oxygen and other supplies, businesses and stores remain closed, and families run out of fuel, food, and drinking water.  

Though protests are a common occurrence in Haiti, this last round was more widespread and lasted longer than normal. Things have been a lot calmer this week (though many roads are still blocked), but we are waiting to see if it is just a respite or if this round of protests has died down. We will be assessing the situation over the next week and establishing a plan for the construction project and our upcoming visiting team trips. If widespread protests continue, we will not send visiting teams to Haiti as the roadblocks prohibit travel between Port-au-Prince and our community of Camp Marie. The safety of our visitors and Haitian staff is always our number one concern, and we also do not wish for those giving of their time to come down and not be able to experience Haiti fully. We are optimistic that the situation will continue to quiet down and we can resume with the project and planned trips.

Our community of Camp Marie and the surrounding areas remained fairly calm. Our staff helped care for our visitors, stepped up as the leaders they are within their community, and continued to move to advance the mission of Project Living Hope.  The Haitian people are hopeful and resilient. This is not the first time that they have had to deal with protests, nor will it be the last. In times like these, we see them come alongside and help support one another in amazing ways.

We ask you to continue to pray for Haiti. Even when these protests die down and life returns to normal, the issues will remain. There is much to be done in Haiti. When facing these situations, we are reminded that Haiti needs jobs. If these young men had employment, they would not be protesting. Haiti is facing many challenges, but we have faith that God can overcome these and we must faithfully continue the work that He is calling us to do -- to empower the Haitian people to build a stronger Haiti. Thank you for praying with us for positive change and forward movement.

Would you like to hear more about Guesly and Sara’s recent trip to Haiti, the construction project, the situation in Haiti, and how you can be praying? We have two opportunities for you to hear from Guesly and Sara firsthand and join us in prayer for the Haitian people:

• Monday, February 25th at Foothills Church in Stayton at 6pm. Dessert will be served.

• Monday, March 11th at Garden Way Church in Eugene at 7pm. Pie will be served