Acting Locally, Caring Globally
Clean Water to 4,000 people in Haiti
When a devastating earthquake hit Haiti in January of 2010, hundreds of thousands of lives and buildings were lost. Surviving villagers were forced to walk miles to fill buckets and jugs to collect clean water for cooking, cleaning, and drinking. Mission staff and volunteers were appalled by the devastation and called to serve.
The Mission marathon team raised $30,000 over two years to build a fresh supply of clean water to the villagers of L'Asile, who lost 200 homes in the earthquake. The new water supply begins miles away from the village at a natural mountain spring which is then fed by solar pump into two 9,000 gallon cisterns 600 feet above the village. The water is powered by gravity into the first cistern and then pumped up to the second. The water is supplied by gravity directly to the town of L'Asile and is a source of clean water for 4,000 people across four villages.
In 2016, Haiti was again devasted by natural disaster when Hurricane Matthew struck. Nearly 900 people were killed and many of the water pipes we installed to provide water to L’Asile and surrounding villages were destroyed. We began raising money to pay for that work and those efforts continue today.
Textbooks for Haiti School Children
In 2017 and 2018 our Boston Marathon team raised money to purchase textbooks for schools in and around L'Asile. In towns with limited resources where leaders struggle to meet basic needs, such as clean water, school improvement projects get deferred. Gifts of textbooks help establish a quality learning curriculum and will benefit students for years to come.
Kenya Program
Our mission work in Kenya supports orphanages and schools for children in Karungu, a village located near Lake Victoria on the western coast of the country. For decades, Kenyan parents have been lost to violence in internal political and ethnic conflicts and widespread HIV/AIDS.
We have partnered with Red Rose Nursery and Children's Centre to distribute food and clothing to orphans, and underwrite educational costs for dozens of primary school children. In these and other poor areas, a little goes a long way, and efforts to provide education to young students is one of the most effective interventions to interrupt the region’s crushing cycle of poverty.
Feel free to read a personal appeal from the Red Rose Nursery and Children's Centre.