Making a Healthplan for Life for Haitian Children

It seems like these days, our hearts are scattered in so many places. We worry about friends and family during the pandemic, we are thinking of people in Ukraine who are suffering and of course we all continue to think about people in our own lives and immediate communities. I am currently working in Cambodia with villages that have no proper sanitation, and climate change is threatening even the most basic systems for water supply and treatment, while closely monitoring the situation in Haiti and hoping to be able to return soon with much needed medical teams.

Haiti has suffered for a very long time, and that is due to crises such as gang and political violence, hurricanes, earthquakes, climate change and diseases, reversing the course on any small level of progress. We at SHH are working on solar panels, nutrition programs, primary healthcare and health education in order to create some safety nets in the face of these crises. Our daily activities include seeing children for wellness and sick visits, teaching them to manage their medications for chronic illnesses, teaching them to farm and tend to animals, running sports clinics for their physical fitness and general sense of accomplishment, providing regular visits with a psychologist to manage trauma, and maintaining our clean water filtration and distribution systems. 

At the orphanage and school, we have identified with the help of the psychologist, several students who are behind in their studies due to a variety of life circumstances, but are losing faith in themselves and struggling to maintain their dignity to learn because they have to be in classes with children who are much younger. Our goal in the coming months is to raise money and support to create a classroom where these students can study without stigma. They have a huge desire to learn, but they rightly need to feel comfortable. If you would like to support this initiative, please donate with the tag line #learnwithdignity.

We hope all is well,

Miriam (and Stephane, Tommy and Lyris)