St. Boniface Haiti Foundation In Action

Fet Timoun - Children's Fun Day

2008-07-12T09:25:00.000-07:00

On a recent Sunday afternoon, St. Boniface coordinated a public health fun day for children in Fond des Blancs. The day, sponsored by COSEDERF, the local children's rights group, followed a week of health promotion sponsored by Unicef and the Haitian Ministry of Health. Basic messages regarding sanitation and nutrition were given followed by each child receiving vitamin A supplementation. Over 100 children attended and participated in fun events such as sack races, tug-of-war, and singing and dancing contests.

How to Buy a Child in 10 Hours - Child Slavery in Haiti

2008-07-09T09:07:00.000-07:00

Last night on ABC's Nightline, a story on child slavery in Haiti was aired. There's a great written article here with a link to the video.

The episode is no exageration. Fond des Blancs has not been untouched by this practice. The local citizen's organization, COSEDERF, has been working on this issue for some time. MSNBC did a series of articles and videos in August last year. The journalists visited Fond des Blancs and contacted COSEDERF. An excerpt from this article is below:

Rural poverty

It takes a bumpy four hours in a 4x4 to make the 60-mile trek from Port-au-Prince to the rural village of Fond des Blancs, where electricity and running water are scarce. The center of activity — a foreign foundation-funded hospital, a church and an outdoor meeting hall — sit in the middle of the valley.

Over the treeless mountains to the south lies the Caribbean Sea. Single-room, thatched-roof huts dot the landscape, many housing families with 10 children or more.Fond des Blancs has little communication with Port-au-Prince and the capital's political system has nearly no influence on the area. Lack of police has made it a favorite destination for Colombian planes to drop drugs for local Haitian runners to send onto the United States.

While some families farm or make charcoal, most have no regular means of support. In the most depressed areas, fortunate children are those that are fed once a day. Children in places like these, activists say, are most at risk of winding up in the restavek system.

A group of Fond des Blancs residents formed the Committee to Promote the Rights of Children of Fond des Blancs (COSEDERF) last year in an effort to keep children in the community. The committee circulated a petition which asks Haitian leaders to "fulfill Haiti's obligations to provide free and compulsory education," believing fewer parents would send their children away if they had access to schooling.

"More than 50 percent of the children in Fond des Blancs don't have the chance to go to school," said Briel Leveille, a community leader and member of COSEDERF. "It is said that education is the foundation of development. It is through education that Haitians will one day come out of this misery."

It is believed that access to education is one of the best ways to keep families together, as it is the inability to send their children to school that often prompts parents to send their children away. St. Boniface Haiti Foundation works with the community on several education projects,and needs continued support in their efforts.

Fet Sen Bonifas - Feast of St. Boniface

2008-06-10T12:28:00.000-07:00

The Feast of St. Boniface was celebrated June 5 in Fond des Blancs with a mass for St. Boniface Hospital’s employees and the community. It was a well-attended service with beautiful music.

Later in the day, a football (soccer) match was held between St. Boniface Hospital and St. Francois Xavier school. Staff from both of these faced off in an exciting game that ended in a score of 2-1 for St. Francois Xavier.

As is tradition, a beach day for the staff was on the following Sunday. A caravan of vehicles transported over 60 staff members to the beach at Mouillage Fouquet for a day of sun, sand, good food and music.

ISI/Loyola Team Visit

2008-05-31T16:00:00.000-07:00

St. Boniface recently hosted a team of medical students from Loyola University. While in Fond des Blancs the team, led by Dr. Aaron Michelfelder, held four remote medical clinics, two each in Villa and Belle Riviere.

The team provided consultations and medications to over 800 patients. They saw many different medical conditions, from common complaints such as colds and hypertension to advanced breast cancer, esophageal cancer, Vitamin B12 deficiency paralysis, Beri Beri and elephantiasis (lymphatic filiarsis). They were packing up their last clinic when a woman presented with a serious machete wound to her hand which they were able to clean and suture.

Thank you for your hard work, Loyola!

Neonatal Training

2008-05-14T08:41:00.000-07:00

A second visiting team from St. Vincent's Medical Center in Jacksonville, FL provided training during their stay in Fond des Blancs. Above, Dr. Ron Carzoli and Lori Saffer, RN give instruction on Neonatal Resuscitation to St. Boniface clinical staff. A second training session covering Fluids, Electrolytes, and Nutrition Support was also given.

Jacksonville Surgical Team Visit

2008-05-12T12:46:00.001-07:00

A surgical team from St. Vincent's Medical Center in Jacksonville, FL recently visited St. Boniface Hospital. During their stay, they performed 22 surgeries. These team visits are of great value to the people of Fond des Blancs, as many times this is the only opportunity for surgery they will have.

High Protein Biscuits

2008-05-08T05:44:00.000-07:00

In light of the recent food crisis in Haiti, St. Boniface has received a generous donation of 200 cases of high protein biscuits from Unicef to distribute to local schools. Many children in Fond des Blancs go to school in the morning without eating, and not all of the schools are able to provide a meal during the day. It's difficult for the students to concentrate and learn when they are hungry. These supplements will be used as a high calorie snack in the schools where no meal is served. As a result, we hope to encourage high academic performances.

Hospital Expansion

2008-04-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

Construction of a new wing for St. Boniface Hospital is underway in response to the increasing number of patients who visit St. Boniface Hospital every month. The new addition to the front of the hospital was started in February and will create new space for additional beds as well as allow for a larger, more comfortable waiting area. These pictures show the cement roof being poured and smoothed just recently.

The St. Boniface Haiti Foundation has several longtime benefactors to thank for this much needed expansion.

Bon Dlo - Good Water

2007-03-06T09:19:00.000-08:00

A new potable water project that partners Water for Life, a local NGO, with support from Florida-based NGO, Food for the Poor, has drilled the first of five possible new wells for Fond des Blancs. The project's coordinators, the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation and RATRAP, FdB's largest peasant cooperative, hopes the new wells will save residents in central FdB the four hour round trip walk that the majority of them must make everyday to find clean drinking water.

Food for the Poor Visits FdB

2007-02-13T16:33:00.000-08:00

Two delegates from the Florida-based NGO, Food for the Poor, accompany representatives from St. Boniface Hospital on a tour of three sites across Fond des Blancs where the hospital, in cooperation with members of the local peasant cooperative, RATRAP, have proposed to design and implement two major fish-farm projects and one major housing project.

"Fet Timoun" - A Day for the Children

2006-11-21T12:34:00.000-08:00

Several children perform a short theater production during Fond des Blancs' first annual celebration of Haiti's National Day Against Child Servitude this past Sunday. Coordinated by St. Boniface Hospital, the community's children's rights committee, COSEDERF, and several local primary schools, the day was filled with games, prizes, and children cashing in on the opportunity to take the mic and speak for themselves.

Children's Rights Volunteers Prepare for Petition Effort

2006-09-29T11:23:00.000-07:00

Last week, the 88 community members who will volunteer as petition workers for the next two months gathered to attend a seminar on children's rights hosted by COSEDERF, Fond des Blancs' new children's rights committee. The petition is the people of Fond des Blanc's first effort to eliminate the community's restavek system, a form of child slavery present throughout Haiti that involves the trafficking of a child by his or her parents to a family, which agrees, in principle, to care for the child, provide schooling, food, shelter, and clothing in exchange for domestic labor. The system fails to protect the child's rights when, in many cases, the employer deprives the child of schooling and family life and replaces it with long days of work with no pay and living conditions inferior to those of the overseer’s family. COSEDERF hopes to deliver 10,000 signatures to the Haitian Government, the United Nations, and the international community on December 10, International Human Rights Day, so as to formally demand that the chosen recipients make available to the children of Fond des Blancs a list of basic services that they are currently without, including their constitutional right to free and compulsory primary education. The SBHF wishes to support the group in all its work as the foundation believes that COSEDERF's dedication to children's rights follows its own mission statement to improve the quality of life of all people in Fond des Blancs.

A Sign of Economic Growth in FdB

2006-09-15T09:46:00.001-07:00

As a result of a goat-breeding project organized and maintained by RATRAP, the largest local peasant cooperative in Fond des Blancs, and supported, in part, by the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation, Fond des Blancs today sells an average of 1,000 goats per week to residents all across Haiti's Southern Department. The goats, which Haitians buy to raise, sell, or eat may also be indirectly responsible for an increase in school attendance in the past few years, as residents often use the monetary supplement that the goats provide to send their children to school each Fall. RATRAP leadership believes that the program may have set Fond des Blancs on a path to become the goat-market capital of the department.

Hospital's New Sonography Capabilities

2006-09-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

With the arrival of long-term St. Boniface volunteer and sonography technician, Vicki Bales, students Kenide and Sergo (pictured above) have the opportunity over the next several months to train on the indispensable machine, which has already found that over 85% of its sonographies turn up positive for pathologies.

Food for the Poorest

2006-08-28T15:32:00.000-07:00

Above, Briel Levielle and Ketland Maignan record the names of the elderly men and women of Fond des Blancs who arrived from all sections of the commune this past week to receive a month's worth of dry rice and beans from the members of Mesanje de Lamou (literally, "messengers of love"), a group of lay Catholics that has organized to provide a safety net of gravely needed social services to Fond des Blancs' eldest and most vulnerable citizens using a network of community members surveying their neighbors' needs. While St. Boniface Hospital still provides food for pregnant women, malnourished children, and those on antiretroviral AIDS treatment and tuberculosis medications, it will now transport the donations from Food for the Poor in Port-au-Prince for the Catholic Church-based group, which hopes to ease the community's demand on the hospital for food. Below, the elderly or those sent in the place of elderly citizens unable to walk, load the rations into sacks to carry home.

Making Partners

2006-07-01T06:26:00.000-07:00

In mid-June, long term St. Boniface volunteer, Conor Shapiro, made the trek to Haiti's Central Plateau to visit four Partners in Health/Zanmi Lasante sites under the medical direction of the much-praised, Dr. Paul Farmer. Hosted by friend and fellow MPH candidate at Boston University, Dr. Wesler Lambert, the two examined the medical centers' model of community health care and explored the possibilities of emulating the approach in Fond des Blancs. The visit also aimed to develop a working relationship between Partners in Health and the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation as both organizations continue to face similar obstacles to providing first-rate healthcare to the poorest of Haiti's poor. Pictured above is a meeting between Partners in Health's community health workers and its community health nurses.

A Night for our Nurses

2006-05-27T18:23:00.000-07:00

St. Boniface Hospital's nurses celebrated Nurse Appreciation Day by throwing the hospital's annual Nurses' Ball. The real appreciation, however, may have been on the part of the hospital staff who were treated to an extraordinary night of fine food and dancing.

New Learning Center Opens in FdB

2006-04-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

This past Monday, the Presnor Poteau Learning Center opened its doors to its first eighty-five students. The center, which aims to provide Creole and French literacy instruction to the scores of Fond des Blancs’ residents who have not had the opportunity to attend or finish their schooling, also features individual and small group tutorials as well as a series of "practical learning" mini-courses that will dot each session. The project is a joint effort by St. Boniface and two local peasant cooperatives, known by their acronyms, RATRAP and APFB.

Making The Rounds

2006-04-05T17:43:00.000-07:00

Geoff Preidis, a medical student and a Ph.D candidate at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, locks hands with St. Boniface staff physicians, Lami and Georges, just after morning rounds. Geoff has received special permission from Baylor to spend one of his eight-week hospital rotations here in southern Haiti. Few clinical experiences can compare with working directly with the residents of Fond des Blancs, he has said.

Visiting The Queen of Peace

2006-04-01T15:12:00.000-08:00

St. Francois Xavier Parish's visiting seminarian, Didier Joseph (in white), visits with the lovely residents at St. Boniface's Mary Queen of Peace home for the elderly. In between his required years of philosophy and theology at the Grand Seminary in Port-au-Prince, Didier plans to visit the home regularly until he resumes his studies in late September.

Food for FDB's Most Needy Returns

2006-03-22T13:15:00.000-08:00

After the heavy rains of October all but destroyed large stretches of Fond des Blancs' roads, the hospital struggled to secure food for its infant and elderly nutrition programs. Recently, the road has become passable once again - at least enough so to receive this load of food stuffs from Catholic Relief Services.

Creating Space

2006-03-22T11:46:00.000-08:00

Trenches dug for cement foundations surround the statue of Mother Mary in front of the hospital where St. Boniface intends to build a new open-air waiting room for patients. The statue will avoid the hot sun this summer as the plans also call for moving it inside the hospital's front entrance.

New Truck Put to Work

2006-03-16T06:16:00.000-08:00

Above, St. Boniface Hospital staff members load "tol," or large sheets of metal roofing, onto the hospital's new truck. The foundation recently purchased the part-flatbed/part-dump truck with a gift from an anonymous donor. Below, community members of Dorial help our staff unload the materials outside the community's Catholic Church, which had lost a large section of its roof during the heavy rains of October. Dorial has had no means of transporting such supplies to their elevated mountaintop locality to repair the damage until this past Tuesday.

A Home for "Ki-Ki"

2006-03-16T05:35:00.000-08:00

Sr. Ellen poses with Nicolas Pierre Clivens, known to the hospital staff as "Ki-Ki," the day before accompanying him to the United States Foundation for the Children of Haiti's Hope Insitute for Disabled Children. Sadly, a mother had abandoned the physically disabled child at our hospital three weeks earlier. He will certainly be missed around the nurses station, where the staff had placed him temporarily, but all are happy to know that Ki-Ki has found a home at a place that can care for his specific needs.

Using Space

2006-03-08T05:27:00.000-08:00

Construction commenced this week on either a counseling office for the hospital's ART program or an examination room for one of the hospital's five doctors - soon to be decided. To conserve space, the office portions off a corner of the existing entrance gallery.