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Sponsorship in Haiti

CFCA assists over 1,200 children and aging persons in Haiti through the Ferrier project.

A declining economy in the country has led the project to focus on housing and household needs, latrines and small home repairs.

Sponsorship helps parents send their children to school, offering hope for the future. Sponsorship funds help pay for tuition, books, supplies, uniforms and other fees. A hot lunch program is offered at many schools to help combat malnutrition.

Besides feeding students, a nourishing noon meal is available for elderly and children attending day care.Ferrier encourages families to grow gardens so they can supplement their diet with nutritious vegetables.

Sponsorship helps pay for medical examinations and needed medicines. A lending program offers small loans to mothers of sponsored children, providing scarce capital to fund income-generating projects, strengthening the families' ability to sustain themselves.

The Azile nursing facility provides special medical care for the sick and physically and mentally handicapped. Medicine and clothing is provided for the nearly 200 residents. A doctor makes weekly visits and is available in the event of any emergency.

At the St. Vincent de Paul subproject, housing and medical care is provided for aging members who do not have family members to care for them. There are also many different activities for the elderly living in the eight homes.

The Ferrier School for the Deaf provides an education for approximately 40 sponsored children.

Read a letter from Sr. Patricia Downs, Ferrier project coordinator.

About Haiti

Haiti, the western one-third of the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, is one of the poorest, most densely populated and least developed countries in the Western Hemisphere. Within this rough and mountainous country, 80 percent of the people live in abject poverty, and the unemployment rate is 70 percent. Of those employed, three-fourths depend on the agricultural sector of the economy despite the country's severe deforestation and soil erosion.

The country lies in the middle of the hurricane belt, which makes it subject to severe storms from June to October. It is also susceptible to occasional flooding, earthquakes and periodic droughts.

Project staff in Haiti report that communications and travel are extremely difficult. The postal system is unreliable and mainly functions in Port-au-Prince. Huge potholes make travel along major highways difficult and dangerous, and mountainous routes are treacherous.

Violence and corruption have paralyzed the political system. Haiti is known as the country of political failures and cultural successes, because the people’s achievements in literature and the arts are the envy of many much larger, more developed nations.

The people

Haitian culture is a mixture of African, French, and West Indian cultures. Recently, the Haitian Creole language (a mixture of French, African, Indian, Spanish, English and Portuguese) has been used more in literature, music, and some governmental functions. This is part of many Haitians taking pride in Creole traditions and their desire to create a culture of their own.

A typical Haitian family farms a tiny plot of land (less than two acres) that was once part of a plantation where the family’s ancestors worked as slaves. Many live in a one-room hut with a thatched roof and walls made of sticks covered with dry mud.

The majority of Haitians live in the overcrowded coastal plains and the valleys in the mountains. In some areas, farmers raise crops on slopes so steep that they anchor themselves with ropes to keep from sliding down the hillside. Major crops include coffee, cacao (which is used to make cocoa and chocolate), mangos, sugarcane, rice, corn and sorghum.

To this day, the people of Haiti follow the customs that their ancestors brought from Africa. One of those traditions is known as combite, where the farm workers move from field to field, planting or harvesting crops to the sound of music and singing. Another is voodoo, which is practiced by roughly half the population. Many Haitians practice a combination of Catholicism and voodoo.

Education

Children in the Ferrier project attend school from September to June.

Although primary education is compulsory, and public education at all levels is free, only about half the children who should be receiving an elementary education do so. There are shortages of buildings, equipment and teachers, and schools are disproportionately situated in urban areas. For these same reasons, relatively few children have an opportunity for a secondary education.

Another problem contributing to low enrollment in schools is the use of French as the language of instruction in the schools. The majority of children speak Creole.

Sources:

World Factbook