Delaware volunteers bring hope to Haiti

Six months after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake crippled the fragile infrastructure of Haiti, life has not yet returned to normal for many who call the Caribbean island nation home.

That’s why the work of the Haiti Family Initiative, a humanitarian group focused on the health and wellness of Haitian refugees, is so important, said co-founder Carole Downs, of Greenville.

The first wave of Delaware volunteers recently returned from Haiti, where they set up a summer camp and medical clinic serving the families living in a tent city near the city of Jacmel, in the southeastern part of the country. A second group is there now and a third is gearing up to make the trip.

Arden-resident Lynn Shapira founded the organization with Downs after Shapira visited Haiti in March with her husband, Nadiv, a Christiana Care doctor who was one of the founders of the Delaware Medical Relief Team of doctors who provided emergency medical care in Jacmel following the earthquake.

“I saw the women and children of Haiti in a terrible state and my heart was with them,” she said. “I couldn’t come home and not do anything.”

Working with contacts Shapira had made during her trip to Haiti and an army of local volunteers who stepped up to the challenge, she and Downs began organizing teams to run weeklong summer camps and a medical clinic near Jacmel.

Seven hundred families are still living in a tent city – one of several near the coastal town of Jacmel – and they are suffering, Shapira said.

Families are crowded, living under sheets, tarps or even shower curtain linings with no protection from the blazing heat, Downs said. Rainwater leaks into their makeshift shelters, turning the ground underfoot to mud, she said.

Many of the children living in the tent city are starving and have limited access to water, Downs said, and their mothers are even suffering heart attacks brought on by huge levels of stress.

“We want to give them some happiness, even if just for a day, to get them out of the misery there,” Shapira said. “They aren’t looking forward to the future at all, so we want to give the children back their childhood.”

More than 150 kids attended the summer camp on the first day – and there were soon so many children who wanted to come that they were running behind the full bus leaving the tent city each morning, she said.

All the kids were fed protein-enriched rice cooked in huge pots by volunteers, Down said. Then they spent each day having the kind of carefree fun characteristic of a summer camp.

The kids made bead necklaces and popsicle-stick picture frames, they sung, danced, played soccer and flew kites on the beach, Downs said.

“It was very rewarding and somewhat overwhelming and sad at the same time,” she said. “We saw a lot of smiles, and that’s what made it all worth it for me.”

Next door to the summer camp, a trio of doctors from the A.I. duPont Children’s Hospital provided medical care for the kids and their families, Shapira said.

There are many non-governmental organizations working near Jacmel, but the Haiti Family Initiative is the newest, she said, and is still working hard to raise funds. The volunteers have all paid their own way to Haiti and many of the expenses the group has faced, she said.

The weekly camp will continue running through mid-August and the Haiti Family Initiative is looking at ways to keep helping the people of Jacmel after the summer is over, she said.

More than simply bandaging wounds and serving meals, the Haiti Family Initiative is about bringing hope, Downs said.

“They know that there are people out there who still care and they want us to keep coming,” she said.