Homes for Haiti awarded $50,000

By Kate Hayden | khayden@charlescitypress.com

Local members of the international honorary sorority Alpha Delta Kappa will receive a $50,000 grant to support continued missions for Homes for Haiti.

Iowa Phi chapter member Susan Jacob submitted an application on behalf of Homes for Haiti for the Alpha Delta Kappa International World Understanding Committee’s 2016 grant, which will be formally awarded in July 2017 in New Orleans. Jacob was assisted by Sue Ayers of Homes for Haiti, and Iowa Phi members Linda Hughes and Joy Hall.

The grant project, T.E.A.C.H. (Training, Educating and Affirming the Children of Haiti) will be awarded funds to build six additional brick-and-mortar classrooms onto an existing school at the Imagine Missions orphanage in Croix Des Bouquets, Haiti.

The application process started three days after the Floyd County Homes for Haiti mission trip returned home at the end of January, Ayers said. It took eight weeks and 26 pages in the application for T.E.A.C.H. to begin the selection process, starting as one of 14 regional winners. The field was then narrowed down to the top three applicants by the International Executive Board, and members from across 1,300 Alpha Delta Kappa chapters voted for the final selection. Chapters nation-wide will participate in local fundraising to reach the $50,000 goal by July.

“This grant is a big deal, we’re just thrilled,” Ayers said.

Jacob called Ayers with the news this summer as she was attending this year’s awards ceremony, where Jacob learned T.E.A.C.H. had been chosen as the next project. The application team waited to tell Imagine Missions until Director Melissa Young arrived in Iowa to give an update on the orphanage’s progress to Floyd County mission participants.

“She said, ‘You haven’t heard anything yet?’, and I told her there had been no official announcement,” Ayers said. “After she finished presenting, I stood up and said, ‘Now I have an official announcement.’”

Adding classroom space would allow Imagine Missions to provide on-site high school curriculum for orphans and area students, instead of sending older orphans into Port-au-Prince, where the mission cannot control the school standards and pays $600 per student in tuition. The new classrooms will also be wired for ceiling fans and interior lights.

“If they can offer their own high school on site, they would have higher educational standards and not have to send the children alone in Port-au-Prince,” Ayers said. “It’s more learning time and a safer environment.”

Expanding the available classroom space will also help expand Saturday Trade School sessions, which Imagine Missions hosts for older orphans and young adults in the community to learn career skills. The session curriculums are led by Haitian experts in trade fields like mechanics, jewelry design, plumbing and other industries. Students take part in the courses to fulfill a proficiency certificate in those fields, proving their experience during a job hunt.

“The fact that it will not only benefit ‘typical’ students, but also young adults in their twenties, (the committee) liked that idea,” Ayers said.

Alpha Delta Kappa, which is an international honorary sorority for women educators, will also offer professional guidance to the mission to build curriculum and educational standards.

“This organization, there are teachers to assist in that process. It’s a really good fit,” Ayers said.

Twenty-seven Floyd County residents traveled last January to the orphanage to build 10 SafeTHomes with the help of paid Haitian workmen. Several of those structures are being used as classrooms for early elementary children living at the orphanage and in the area, and some are being used for teacher housing.

Since Floyd County residents left, the mission has added an open-air walkway with connecting sidewalks between the SafeTHomes and landscaping to make the buildings a home. Ayers, who has been involved in the mission work for six years, said Homes for Haiti is already planning for fundraising and looking for potential participants before the next trip in 2018.

“There are a lot of organizations that ask for money, and I know that people get tired of not knowing where their money goes,” Ayers said. “Every penny given to Imagine Missions during our mission trip, they run a lean and tight ship, and we saw it. The money raised goes where the people who give the money intends for it to go.”

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