24870: Hermantin (News) Charity home cares for Haiti's neediest children

[sak-pase@bimini.ws]

leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Charity home cares for Haiti's neediest children
By MIKE WILLIAMS
Cox News Service
Friday, April 22, 2005

FERMATHE, Haiti — Junior is about 20 years old, although nobody knows his 
age for sure. Severely autistic, he is one of Haiti's throw-away children, 
abandoned by his family as a child, found wandering in a forest.

In a country of desperate suffering, those with mental impairment and severe 
physical disabilities suffer the most.

But Junior is one of the lucky ones. Somehow, he found his way to Wings of 
Hope, a small, private home for disabled children where he receives tender 
care and attention.

He spends most of his days in a spotless room, sitting upright in a bed 
fitted with rails like a baby's crib, his gnarled legs curled beneath him as 
he hums and groans in a world all his own.

"He likes to be patted on the back," said Renee Dietrich, the home's 
advancement director, who draws a big, toothy smile from Junior as she rubs 
his back and coos to him in a soothing, low voice. "Sometimes he gets up and 
goes to meals on his own."

Perched high on a mountainside above the squalor and violence of the Haitian 
capital, Wings of Hope has become a tiny beacon of caring in a nation bereft 
of public institutions that care for the unfortunate.

"Handicapped kids in Haiti are seen as manifestations of evil spirits," 
explained Dietrich, an Iowa native who gave up a career as a newspaper 
photographer to move to Haiti and work at the home. "People don't want 
anything to do with them. We have had children left on our doorstep, 
surrounded by a crowd of people who will not touch them because if they do, 
they become responsible. For some of these children, we are the only ones 
who will take them."

Most remarkable, however, is the fact that Wings of Hope was started, in 
essence, by other abandoned children — street kids from the Port-au-Prince 
slums who, touched by caring and charity themselves, wanted to reach out to 
help children even less fortunate.

Many of the children at Wings of Hope were living at an orphanage run by 
French charity workers in the early 1990s. Exhausted by their work and 
frightened by Haiti's political violence, the French workers decided to 
leave Haiti, Dietrich said. They spent a year trying to find others to care 
for their disabled charges.

One of the facilities they contacted was St. Joseph's, a small home for 
abandoned boys in Port-au-Prince. Several of the boys soon came to visit.

"After the visit, I asked the boys if we they wanted to take one of the 
orphans to live with us," recalled Michael Geilenfeld, St. Joseph's founder. 
"The boys wanted to take them all. I told them we didn't have enough money 
to care for so many handicapped children, but they convinced me that since 
God had provided for them, He would find a way to support these children."

Wings of Hope opened shortly afterward, soon moving to a new home that was 
later expanded and now houses 34 disabled children. The house is now run by 
Luckner Fond-Rose, 31, a graduate of St. Joseph's.

"When I was 6 years old, my mother gave me to an aunt who used me as a child 
slave," Fond-Rose recalled. "She beat me and made me work all day and 
wouldn't let me go to school. God blessed me by helping me find my way to 
St. Joseph's. I had never been to school before. I got a new life. These 
children have been rejected like I was, and now I'm giving back to them what 
I received."

Both homes are now thriving places of hope and achievement, along with 
Trinity House, another facility located at Jacmel on Haiti's southern 
coastline. The homes are supported by church groups and hundreds of 
individual donations, most coming from people in the United States.

But the homes strive to pay at least part of their own way. Each doubles as 
a guest house for visitors, charging a small fee for room and board. The 
children also do art work and handicrafts that are sold to visitors, while a 
dance troupe formed by the boys of St. Joseph's, called the Resurrection 
Dance Theater of Haiti, puts on performances for visitors and has appeared 
at folk festivals around the globe.

"I've been to Senegal and Gambia to learn drumming techniques," said Bill 
Nathan, 20, one of the lead drummers for the dance troupe, who, like 
Fond-Rose, was given away by his family at a young age to be a house slave.

The boys at St. Joseph's also reach out to the troubled streets where they 
once lived. Each of the older boys "adopts" a poor family in Cite Soleil, 
one of the capital's most notorious slums, visiting them weekly and helping 
them arrange small loans to start businesses. The St. Joseph's boys mentor a 
youngster from each family, paying his school fees while giving advice about 
how to avoid the pitfalls and violence of Haiti's mean streets.

"Over 200 children have gone to school because of the work we have done," 
Nathan said. "Now they can eat, too, and I hope my family will soon be able 
to move out of Cite Soleil."

At Wings of Hope, days are filled with school classes, exercise, 
rehabilitation therapy, trips to a nearby park and recreational activities 
designed for the abilities of the severely-disabled children.

Soni, one of the most successful of the home's residents, was in terrible 
shape when he was taken from French charity workers. Bent and twisted by 
cerebral palsy, he had not left his bed for five years. The St. Joseph's 
boys began massaging him and encouraging him to walk, one tucked under each 
arm while another moved his legs.

Eventually, Soni began walking on his own. He told his new friends he wanted 
to fly like a bird, so they choreographed a dance for the Resurrection 
troupe in which Soni was swung around in the arms of a bigger boy. 
Eventually Soni was able to dance on his own.

His story is told in a small book, "Soni's Mended Wings," written by 
Canadian children's author Peter Eyvindson. Soni and Eyvindson travel 
throughout the U.S. and Canada on fund-raising missions, and sales of the 
book help support the work of Wings of Hope.

"I'm helping these children today," Soni said on a recent sunny morning, 
tapping a tambourine before a tiny girl named Josephine, who kicked her legs 
in time on the front of her wheelchair.

Dietrich said the home plans to purchase an adjoining property, and is 
beginning a fund-raising drive in hopes of expanding their facility.

"We'd like to have a park so all of our children can get outside to feel the 
grass under their feet and sit in the shade of the trees," she said. "We 
hope to have an infirmary and a new school, a better dorm room for the girls 
and a workshop where we can repair our wheelchairs."

The homes often must turn needy children away because their resources are 
limited. Staff members say such decisions are heartbreaking, but they don't 
want to grow too large because they would give up the full-time attention 
that has made such a remarkable difference in the lives of the children they 
care for.

"We don't want to get bigger, we want to get better," Dietrich said.