His Light for Haiti plans to brighten the lives of Caribbean nation community

Benefit dinner and auction set for Saturday in Abbot

By Stuart Hedstrom
Staff Writer

    For nearly a half decade, area residents Janet Grant and Laurie Harvey have been working to improve the lives of the residents of the small Haitian town of Hatte Borel, located in the central portion of the nation on the western side of the island of Hispaniola a few hours north of the capital Port-au-Prince, through their organization His Light for Haiti.

Photo courtesy of His Light for Haiti

    BRIGHTENING THEIR LIVES — A crowd of residents of the Haitian community of Hatte Borel wait to be checked out during a medical clinic last year through His Light for Haiti. The organization, run by local residents Janet Grant and Laurie Harvey and others, provides schooling for children and services for the entire community to help improve the lives of residents. A benefit dinner and auction for His Light for Haiti starts at 5 p.m. on Saturday, April 25 at the Abbot Evangelical Free Church.

    His Light for Haiti has a mission statement of the belief in working alongside those in Haiti to spread and live the word of God with the goal of providing opportunities for the people of Hatte Borel to learn skills that will enable them to become independent and have a better life. They are also encouraged to then pay it forward and give back to their community.
    “This would not be possible without the community behind us,” Grant said about the local contributions that have been made to His Light for Haiti, which is funded entirely by donations with the pair and others covering their own expenses. “Whenever we have a need they jump up and help us.”
    Grant and Harvey mentioned their own churches, the Abbot Evangelical Free Church and Family Worship Center respectively, have been providing a great deal of assistance for His Light for Haiti, as has the Church of the Open Bible, Dexter Baptist Church and Bradford Baptist. Grant said a group of women from Dexter Baptist made an outfit for each student attending their school, dresses and shorts, and are now in the process of making dolls — a toy most of the children have never had before.
    “I could not imagine doing this anywhere else,” Grant said, saying the employees of Mayo Regional Hospital have worked hard to help bring more medical resources into Hatte Borel. “We just can’t say enough about how much we appreciate all the people coming together to support Laurie and I and our work in Haiti! We could not do this without each and everyone of them!”
    Mentioning that 50 percent of all Haitian children are not able to go to school, with a third of girls never going, 30 percent not making it to third grade and 60 percent not progressing to grade 6, Grant and Harvey said a main focus of His Light for Haiti is the school. “We have 150 students, now preschool to grade 6 and we are hoping to do grade 7,” Grant said. “Laurie and I, our motto is ‘making a difference one child at a time.’”
    In Haiti, 37.9 percent of the entire population is unable to read or write. This percentage is over three times that of the rest of Central and South America.
    “The support has been unbelieveable,” Harvey said. She said during a trip to Haiti last year, a pair of physician assistants joined them for a medical clinic “and in two days we saw 587 people; people really want the opportunity to see a doctor.”
    “We had a medical clinic in a stable with no electricity and we were there all day,” Grant said.
    The two said Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas and one of the poorest nations in the world, with a poverty level of 84 percent and half of all Haitian children under the age of 5 being malnourished.
    Grant said in 2014 the Caribbean was hit with the chikungunya virus, and “our team went into that, knowing it was there,” Harvey added. The two are working now to raise enough funds to provide for a medical clinic in Hatte Borel this June. They said they want medical resources to be part of the schooling, such as daily vitamins along with the meals served everyday to students.
    “We have got the trade school started,” Grant said, about an idea they have had to provide for vocational training beyond the grade school. She said a solar dehydrator has been purchased for the school, and this will be installed during the June trip.
“We put up fencing as livestock will be part of their work and their food,” Harvey said. “In the end they need to be able to do things for themselves.”
“We both want to dig a well, it is a lot of work but they don’t have water,” Grant said, about a source that can be used solely for drinking.
His Light for Haiti is more than just Grant and Harvey, as Grant said the organization is “a whole group that comes together and we now have a fundraising committee.”
On Saturday, April 25 His Light for Haiti will host a benefit dinner and auction, with the evening starting at 5 p.m., at the Abbot Evangelical Free Church. “It’s really fun, you go in and put little bids on things,” Harvey said about the auction, which will feature silent and live bidding and jar raffles.
The menu will include both Haitian and American dishes. The two said the Haitian cuisine attendees can have the opportunity to try include rice and beans, fried plantains, pikliz (a side similar to cole slaw but with a hot taste) and patte.
 “Anybody that would like to go down, they can contact us,” Grant said. “Whatever their gift, whatever they can do we can use.”
For more information on His Light for Haiti, please call 564-3598 or 564-0722, email hislightforhaiti@ymail.com or go to the organization’s new
website at www.HisLightForHaiti.weebly.com or find them on Facebook.