What does Friends of the Orphans do in Haiti?
Friends of the Orphans provides financial and volunteer support to Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos/Nos Petits Freres et Soeurs (NPH/NPFS, Spanish and French for “Our Little Brothers and Sisters”), which has orphan homes and outreach programs in nine countries, including Haiti.
NPH/NPFS programs in Haiti include:
St. Hélène Orphanage for Children
This permanent home for orphaned, abandoned and disadvantaged children opened in 1987. It is located in Kenscoff, 25 miles from Port-au-Prince. Currently the home cares for more than 350 children on site and supports an additional 150 who live with family members off-site. It has 19 residential cottages, an open-air amphitheater, chapel, farm and primary school (grades 1-8).
• St. Damien Medical Center/Pediatric Hospital
The only free pediatric hospital in Haiti, St. Damien’s has 120 beds for inpatients and the outpatient clinic attends to 100 children daily.
• Kay Saint Germaine Located at the Fr. Wasson Center, the original hospital in Pétionville, this day program provides care to disabled children who live with their families. There is also an advanced therapy and treatment center adjacent to the new hospital. Since the Haitian government provides no social services for children with disabilities, these programs encourage and enable parents to care for their children at home and lessen the likelihood of abandonment.
• Street Clinics The St. Luke Medical Team operates clinics three times a week, mainly in Wharf Jeremy and once a week in the busy Saturday market.
• St. Luke Ex-Pequeño Support and Outreach Programs Fr. Rick Frechette, who is a doctor and the regional director for NPH/NPFS Caribbean, initiated St. Luke in 1999 as a response to the challenges that the youth of NPH/NPFS face once on their own. All of the NPFS and St. Luke programs have a required ratio of ex-pequeños to staff. This helps create a healthy competition and interaction plus develop relationships with colleagues from other settings.
• Burials for the Indigent There are two components to this program. One is preparing the bodies of the 200 children who die at the St. Damien Hospital each year. The second is burying the destitute from the general hospital morgue. Children have the first priority resulting in 15 to 20 children per papier-mâché coffin. The coffin also includes a hand-made rosary. The bodies are transported to a cemetery, which is located on rented land owned by the government.
• Water Truck The children and families in the Cité Soliel slums have little to no access to water. Each day, 21,000 gallons of water, enough for 2,500 families, are delivered in a truck donated from an Italian foundation. Two employees, one of whom is an ex-pequeño, work distributing the water and they also perform crowd control when fights break out during every delivery because people are so desperate for water.
• Food Distribution Distributing food to the poor is becoming more difficult with the rising food costs. 150 bags of rice previously cost $3,000. Now it is $9,000. Areas for food distribution are identified by workers and rotated throughout the year. There are 12 distributions and 100,000 beneficiaries per year.
• Street Schools St. Luke operates 16 primary schools in the worst slums in Cité Soliel, where children do not have the luxury of going to school. The program also offers one meal a day to 2,000 children. The worst, most violent locations are chosen to receive the meals. For the majority of these children, this is the only food they will receive in a day.
For more information about these programs supported by Friends of the Orphans, please see the
Haiti Initiative page and/or read the
Helping in Haiti Report. Related Information:
• Haiti Initiative • Helping in Haiti Report
• NPH Hait Fact Sheet/Visitor's Guide
• Latest Earthquake News •
How Can I Help? •
Earthquake in Haiti Fact Sheet