This week we helped some friends (pictured here) from Cascade Pichon attend a training for a program called Mutual Solidarity (MUSO). The program allows Haitians to take out loans from their own communities with low interest rates and start their own businesses!
MUSO has had tremendous economic success in southeast Haiti over the last few years, already generating tens of thousands of dollars in Haitian currency. We’re very exited for where it could take our community of Cascade Pichon!
Why do we go back year after year to the same communities that we’ve been in relationship with since our first trip to Haiti? Because we believe that real development and change happens through relationships, and not simply through charity.
One of our core beliefs is that our Haitian brothers and sisters are ultimately going to be the ones who bring themselves out of poverty. We must remember this. They are the masters of their destiny, and we’re just here do to life with them. Every single “project” that we have been a part of at LQVE was initiated by a Haitian community reaching out with a dream. We then come alongside our Haitian family and attempt to materialize this dream together. It is crucial for us to continue to understand that Haitians make their own development decisions, and we cannot get in the way of that in the name of fundraising or good intentions. Our role is to continue making friendships in Haiti, and to be a supporter and encourager for our friends to chase their already existent dreams.
The books are finished up for 2018. Thanks to everyone for another great year. Over 20K went directly to Haitian nurses, and teachers. (And an additional 20K went into the Haitian economy because of our trip there last year.)
There are so many things we want to do in the future. Thank you for partnering with us in this very complex endeavor. BTW, you know it's complex to work with folks a couple of thousand miles away, and a whole culture away, right? But, we're still at it!
Blessings everyone!
We give, serve, go, and pray because others need our involvement, but also because we need to be involved. It's possible that the thing most often overlooked in the work we do with Haiti (and the work all humans do in helping others everywhere) is that the one serving needs to serve as much as the one receiving the gift needs the gift! To be fully human one has to find ways to give away power.
School girls in S/E Haiti. Photo cred: Dylan Aebersold
KC people, Thursday, March 7 over the lunch hour, LQVE is partnering up with Kansas City’s premier co-working company, Plexpod, to build some care kits for people in Haiti. If you’ve got travel size soap, shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste, washcloth, bandaids, and biodegradable plastic bags (no bigger than 3 gallons) let us know! The team will take them down when they go the second week of March.
Our next group of college students preparing for another amazing trip to Haiti! We’re thankful for their investment. Please pray for them. They’ll be in Haiti in March.
RE is opening a new store in the CrossRoads District, downtown KC. 10% of sales throughout their grand opening weekend goes to support LQVE. KC people go check em out!
Some of us engaged in struggles for social justice have been incredibly naive about what has been happening in our own psyches. Our very identities are often defined by our resistance to evil. It’s our way of feeling good about ourselves: if we are against evil, we must be good. The impatience of some activists with prayer, meditation, and inner healing may itself betray an inkling of what they might find if they looked within. For the struggle against evil can make us evil, and no amount of good intentions automatically prevents its happening. The whole armor of God that Ephesians 6: 10– 20 counsels us to put on is crafted specifically to protect us against that contagion of evil within our own souls, and its metals are all forged in prayer.
Walter Wink. The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium
One of LQVE’s biggest days of the year is Giving Tuesday. You’ll be hearing more about it, but because Facebook waves all fees on that particular day, it winds up being a good time to give! We’ve got lots of things planned for LQVE HAITI this coming year (More soccer, more help with teachers, more medicine, finishing up the latest clinic, etc…) We’ll need your help. Thanks for putting Nov 27 on your calendar.
“Our” Nurse Maryse saw 170 people last month in the clinics at Cascade and Bel Airre. 25 of them were less than five years old. There’s no guarantee that any of them would’ve had access to healthcare without our partnership with Heart to Heart International
It's really amazing to be a part of something from the ground up. Scroll down a few blog posts to see what this site looked like just a couple of months ago. Now, it's a new healthcare clinic for Nurse Maryse and the people of Bel Arrie, and almost ready to be occupied. Thank you everyone for supporting our work. And don't stop. People's lives are being impacted. (Haitians and Americans!)
Honored to be a part of another amazing trip to Haiti. We worked, and swam, and painted, and sweat, and laughed, and served. I don't know what else someone would want on a trip. Thanks everyone who supported us, financially and in prayer. Please don't stop. Keep giving. The need is huge.
Shay's back in Haiti with Frantz preparing for the rest of us arriving Monday, July 16, which just happens to be Quincy's birthday. Frantz not smiling is a rare photo. Obviously, they're trying to be cool.
Photo cred: RhythmKC
Louis hanging with school kids in pichon.
New healthcare clinic being built.
Progress.
The always beautiful cascades of Cascade Pichon.
Watching soccer never gets old in Haiti.
Haitian children dodging the warm waves of the Caribbean.
M.N.U. Spring Break Team 2018 part I
Part II
School's out!
The new healthcare clinic in Belle Anse, Haiti is progressing! MidAmerica Nazarene University is partnering with LQVE, and Heart to Heart, Haiti to make this project happen. Pray for the team of university students who are heading to Haiti this week!
