By Karen Wienberg | Chair, Board of Directors
The lights you have ignited! Not only do we have multiple vocational school graduates, who have new found empowerment, dignity and opportunities for employment, but we have bee able to suppport youth in medical school and agronomy studies in University this year! AMAZING! We are so incredibly proud of these youth who graduated from vocational training this year! Two of them even gave speeches at the graduation ceremony! They have come so far and created so much change in their own lives already! Our staff are so proud of the tremendous challenges and hard work that these youth have ovcome in just the past few years!
Our incredibly hardworking staff have trained additional groups of vulnerable mothers in the Grande Anse and another in Les Cayes area so that they can enter our business start-up program. Let's empower parents so they can better care for their children and further develop their own communities! Thank you to our incredible staff and YOU, our committed supporters, for making these families' futures brighter – and demonstrating to their children and communities what IS possible!
Our Agronomist, and our Outreach team, work with multiple families continuing to grow sustainable food supplies and marketable food sources in the rural communities across the southern peninsula. A few months ago we provided many families with livestock. One of the former street youth, reunited with his family last year, received sheep... and now has little lambs! Our dedicated staff team spend very long days making these essential trips to the Grande Anse area, ensuring to provide agricultural supplies and nutritional support to reunited families. In June 2018, we were able to convince this boy (photo below) to leave the streets. He's now reunited with his mother, helping her rebuild her home, planting his own family's garden, giving us gifts of fresh avocados from his yard, and back in school!
Good nutrition is key to good learning. Our Agronomist not only works with rural families to ensure optimal crop growth, he has also planted crops on the land that LFBS has purchased, and he and our Youth Leader team have harvested corn, plantain and peanuts! Our Transitional Safehouse staff then shelled and roasted the peanuts, and ground them into fresh local peaunut butter that we have been able to distribute to families so that the children can have healthy snacks before and after school! And what better way for youth to learn and grow their self-esteem, than to have them involved in providing for their communities?
Sharing awareness of the realities of the children we rescue and reunite with their families, and the unique programs, initiatives and partnerships that LFBS undertakes to ensure they can stay together, learn and thrive toward healthy self-sufficiency, is critical to continue building awareness and support. In October, LFBS Co-founder and Head of Haiti Operations was invited to travel to Miami, Florida and to Ontario, Canada, presenting at numerous events, including the District 7010 Rotary Conference, “Dare to Dream” in Deer Lake; “An Evening with Morgan Wienberg” hosted by Windsor Rotary Club; and “International Project Celebration of LFBS”, hosted by Whitby Rotary. At that event, Morgan was presented with the prestigious Wilf Wilkinson Peace Award! This award recognizes “the advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace”. Your support makes that work possible.
Recently IBESR, one of our local Haiti Government Department partners, (Haiti’s Social Services Department) did a thorough review of the ‘orphanages’ across the country. Of 754 orphanages visited and evaluated by local authorities, only 35 in the whole country are up to minimum standards! Several have been identified to have sexual abuse, and 302 have been identified to have physical abuse (likely figure is probably even higher). It is critical that international donors be vigilant about what their donations are going towards and that the education of local parents and support to reunify and strengthen families continues. THIS is why family reunification and strengthening toward healthy, safe and self-sufficient futures is so important! LFBS is so very proud, and grateful to YOU, for supporting our work over the past 7 years toward making it possible for us to do exactly that <3
To the child on the hospital bed who wanted to live, and to cuddle, and to fight for survival– but was left, weak and untouched, until it was too late.
To the child who’d been gang raped so many times that at age 14, you thought it was normal and gave your body up willingly. You even ran away to return to your abusers.
To the child who was so badly abused and neglected, you’d never learned that hurting others was wrong… after all, those who were meant to care for you had only hurt you. You followed their example.
To the child sleeping on a prison cell floor, unable to roll over
because it’s so crowded. Perhaps you couldn’t handle the hunger anymore and were driven to desperate measures – or perhaps you’d joined the wrong group of friends, because they made you feel accepted in a world where you’d faced too much rejection.
To the child whose life experiences have taught you it’s better to be feared than to be fearful; who’s become the most violent person around so that others won’t attack you… Whose eyes are dark with what looks like anger, coldness and a lack of empathy – but what is truly a disguise for pain.
I see the window of vulnerability when our eyes meet.
I see that I get through to you when we speak alone – but as soon as you step back into your world I see negative influences draining your motivation and hope and self worth.
I see the genuine desire you have to live a different life, to break free and be yourself… I see through the years of pain, mistrust, and hopelessness that have built over your positivity and morale.
I see you.
I see all that you could have been if this world hadn’t let you down."
Thank you so very very much for making the difference and being a catalyst for igniting the lights in people's eyes ... and the path to a real future. Please share our work with friends and colleagues. You can see change unfolding on our Facebook page (Little Footprints, Big Steps), also please visit our website for further information and details.
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