St. Clare’s Support for Haiti Outreach Mission

St. Clare’s support and involvement in the Haiti Outreach Mission (HOM) has been a major factor in the improved medical and educational resources in Mirebalais during the past five years.  Donations of medical supplies, participation in mission trips, and prayers for our friends in Haiti are critical contributions to sustaining this ministry.

The Sixth Annual Haiti Gala - Caribbean Feast on October 10, 2009, was a lively and wonderful fundraising event for the Haiti Outreach Mission. It featured an authentic Caribbean-style meal, silent auction, live auction, raffle, and dancing to exuberant steelband and calypso music. Generous participation in the Haiti Gala activities this fall has enabled St. Clare’s to continue providing substantial medical, educational, and advisory assistance through HOM this coming year.

The Haiti Outreach Mission (HOM), begun in 1998, is an ecumenical lay mission group dedicated to helping the people, especially the children, of Mirebalais, Haiti and to educating people in the U.S. about this devastated country. HOM receives primary support from several churches (including Episcopal, Catholic, and Baptist) and partners with two churches in Mirebalais, St. Louis Catholic and St. Pierre Episcopal, which provide a base of operation and are accountable for the goods and services HOM provides.

St. Clare’s has been supporting HOM since 2004.  Jim Schairbaum, St. Clare’s outgoing HOM liaison, first visited Mirebalais in 2004. He provided the following report in the August 2009 St. Clarian about that experience:

Reaching Mirebalais [35 miles from Port au Prince] required a 5-hour very rough road trip along the coast and around the Trou D’ea mountain range.  We traveled in an old van with no air conditioning.  The road was so rough and dusty that we could open the windows only when there was no oncoming traffic.

On arrival in Mirebalais, we began our tour of HOM projects.  An orphanage had been started, but work had been discontinued due to civil unrest; weeds surrounded the building site.  The clinic was open periodically with a part-time nurse.  The roof leaked; paint was peeling off the walls; there was one old dental chair.  St. Pierre elementary school was in very bad shape with a leaking tin roof, cardboard ceilings, and very little equipment.  Three rooms had been burned out due to arson associated with local civil unrest.  Not an encouraging picture.

Fast forward to 2009.

• A duly elected Haitian government is in place, although the UN peacekeepers remain.  The trip to Mirebalais from Port-au-Prince takes about 1 ½ hours over the mountains on a nearly completed paved highway.
• The HOM mission trip in March 2009 included 64 doctors, dentists, nurses, construction folks, translators, gardeners, and folks with various other needed skills (including 9 participants affiliated with St. Clare’s).
• The orphanage is completed with space for 50 children.  The 2009 mission group planted a garden and refurbished the orphanage with paint, screens, play things, murals, and a cleaned up play area.
• New classrooms and new bathrooms have been constructed at St. Pierre school, and a computer lab/library is in operation.
• The clinic has been refurbished with a new roof, tile floors, and a pharmacy; new bathrooms have been constructed; a new water system is in place; there is a full-time physician and part-time dentist; 3 fully equipped dental chairs supported the 3 dentists working at the clinic during the mission trip.  A mobile medical team visited the outlying area for the first time in 2009.

These are a few examples of progress since 2004.  The way forward has been filled with many complications, disappointments, and frustrations.  Nevertheless, HOM and St. Clare’s have remained faithful to our mission of improving life for the people of Mirebalais, especially the children.  We have persevered and sustained our efforts.

Many more opportunities remain to make a difference.  A water purification system at the orphanage is being purchased to provide clean water to both the orphanage and the general public.  An installation crew will travel to Mirebalais this summer to install this equipment.  A pharmacist will be hired for the clinic.  The clinic dentist will be hired full time.  A preventative dental test program will be implemented at Desvarrieux school this fall to evaluate using daily fluoride tablets.  Plans are being developed to purchase land for a fish farm outside Mirebalais to provide jobs and a self-sustaining source of high quality protein for local residents.