Over the last several months our students, staff and programs at our Carrefour site have been the hardest hit by the impact of the ongoing gang violence that has been running rampant throughout the country. At times some of our students, their families, our staff and other community members in this area fled their homes in search of safety in other villages as gang members took over the community of Carrefour and claimed it as their own. Our Feeding Program was unable to operate or needed to operate utilizing alternative methods for a period of time and students were not able to go to school. Safety concerns in this area became the predominant way of life.
By the grace of God, after several weeks of living in fear the gangs in this area have receded to the point where schools have reopened, our Feeding Program has returned to full operations, and most recently we were able to we were able to hand out school supplies for the current school year and our Awards of Excellence in October to the top three performing students in each grade for the 2023-2024 school year.
As our Feeding Program is so needed by our students, especially since it may provide their only hot meal of the day, our amazing staff in Carrefour were able to continue to operate utilizing innovative strategies such as having the students pick up their meals to eat at home and delivering their meals to them at their house when necessary. Unfortunately, at other times even these methods were not safe and our program had to cease operations for a period of time. Thankfully, our Feeding Program in Carrefour is now fully back in action and the students are once again able to enjoy a hot meal at the end of their school day (see video below).
As mentioned above, once Carrefour was more stabilized with people returning to their homes we were able to hand out the Awards of Excellence to our students in this area. The recipients of these awards received money instead of a goat or chickens (as was awarded to the Awards of Excellence students in the Jacmel area) as it was not possible to purchase any goats or chickens in Carrefour due to the level of gang activity. Pictured below with their award are a few of the award recipients; Rose Kester Sauraya Charles (in blue), Meik Anderson Saint-Luce (in red) and Sterline Wilencia Dorvil (in pink).
We are so grateful that all of our students and staff in the Carrefour community are safe and now back in their homes, that our Feeding Program has fully resumed, and that our students in this area have been able to return to school. We pray that as the extremely dangerous situation in Haiti continues, our program operations in this area and in the other communities that we support, are able to remain open and fully functioning. As things stand now, it's business as usual of which we are so grateful and blessed as many villages and other non-profit organizations in Haiti have been much more negatively affected than we have been at Restore Haiti.
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