Friday, January 26, 2007

Reality check

I try to be positive and upbeat on this blog. Who needs to see more bad or sad news, right? This is a way to share some of the great things happening here and to give you a glimpse into our daily lives. The problem is that one can get the wrong impression. Scanning the blog, one would never guess at the frustration we have to deal with on a regular basis. The Haitian government is anything but helpful and often adds obstacles to our work; the residual effects of slavery still exist and hamper our efforts to liberate the children via education, vocational training and life-coaching; the kids are far from being angels (no big news there!) and there are times when our teens test us beyond our patience; money is always in short supply so we have to scramble all the time to find the cash to pay for food, salaries, personal hygiene stuff, repairs to the vehicles... So, to set the record straight, I write these lines. It is probably not a good time of year to ask for contributions but we are in need now. We are very grateful to many for their generosity and we have the capacity to be even more grateful. Security is an issue here and we need a fence built around the housing for the children. The houses need to be transformed into homes for the children. They should be painted on the inside, have closet space, have enough linen for everyone, have a table and chairs. Once the fence is up we'd like a playground area for the little people to keep them occupied and supervised. We need a library so the children can have access to books in Creole, French and English. The list could go on but I just wanted to let you see the flip side a bit. If you or a group (congregation, club) would like to help us with one of these projects we'd happily provide you with more details.
Estimated costs of the mentioned projects:
Fence for housing $40,000
Houses to homes $3,000 each house
Playground $4,500 (includes see-saw pump for water)
Library $35,000
Thanks for listening. God bless.

No comments:

Post a Comment