Haiti mission director making North Iowa visit

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

For several years, groups of people from the Charles City area have been visiting a small orphanage and school in Haiti.

These area residents have been donating their time, talents and money to help make better lives for the children who live at Imagine Missions in Despinos, Haiti, and for others in that area near Port-au-Prince.

Now, this month, the co-director of Imagine Missions is coming to Iowa, to visit with some of the people who have helped her kids, and to raise funds to continue the effort.

Melissa Young is a former Ohio kindergarten teacher who almost 10 years ago made her first visit to the mission, then two years later resigned her teaching position and moved to Haiti full-time to take over as American co-director of the orphanage, according to Susan Jacob of Charles City, who has also been involved in the Haiti relief efforts.

An Imagine Missions “Love Gala” will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. Sunday, July 29, at the Waterloo Elks Club, with Young as the guest of honor.

It is part of a “$100,000 in 100 days” fundraising effort this summer to raise operating funds for the mission.

Jacob said groups from the Charles City and New Hampton area, as well as people from Cedar Rapids have been involved in mission efforts, so Waterloo seemed like a nice central location for the event, which will include a dinner and a silent auction.

Tickets can be purchased by contacting Jacob at 641-330-9876, or from Jeremy Heyer at the Edward D. Jones office in Charles City, from St. John Lutheran Church, Trinity United Methodist Church or from Trinity Lutheran Church in New Hampton.

Jacob’s involvement in Imagine Missions began after she heard a presentation by Susan Ayers, who started Homes for Haiti to raise money in 2012 to help with recovery from the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti and from subsequent hurricanes.

Ayers’ goal had been to raise enough money to buy one Safe-T-Home from Soukup Manufacturing in Sheffield and have it sent to Haiti. The buildings were essentially converted new metal grain bins, turned into spacious and comfortable hurricane-proof homes.

Homes for Haiti raised enough to buy seven Safe-T-Homes and help them be constructed in Haiti that first year over the 2012-13 New Year’s holiday. Since then it has bought and built 10 more homes in 2015 and 10 more buildings for homes and school classrooms in 2016.

As Ayers and other volunteers returned home and told their stories, Jacob, a representative of the World Understanding Committee of the international Alpha Delta Kappa teaching sorority, asked Ayers if there was anything the sorority could do.

After elementary school students moved into the Safe-T-Home classrooms, room in the existing school became available for secondary students, and building an addition onto that school would allow all grades K-12 to be offered on the mission grounds.

With the help of Ayers and two Iowa chapter sorority members, Jacob submitted an application for a $50,000 grant to the Alpha Delta Kappa World Understanding Committee, to build six additional classrooms onto the existing school.

The application was for a project they called TEACH — “Training, Educating and Affirming the Children of Haiti.”

“There were a number of international projects that were submitted and they were narrowed down to three,” Jacob said in a recent interview with the Press. “The international membership voted on which of them they wanted.”

The Haiti project was selected, and the sorority’s goal was to raise $50,000 to build the school.

“We raised over $53,000,” Jacob said. “It was going to be a six-room school, and Melissa got home to Haiti and did some figuring and they built eight classrooms.”

There are about 85 to 100 children at the orphanage, Jacob said, and about 300 children at the Christian school including children from the community who are also allowed to attend.

Money from the grant became available last summer and construction started in November. By January the addition was finished and beginning to be used.

Jacob also helped work with Midwest Missions Distribution Center in Chatham, Illinois, to send desks to the school. The center is the upper Midwest disaster relief center for the United Methodist Committee on Relief, and Jacob said she has gone there to volunteer about a dozen times.

The desks are made from reclaimed school bleachers and are shipped flat then assembled on site.

Jacob said 29 of the free desks were sent for the elementary school, then when the new school was finished she asked for 60 more of the slightly larger secondary school-size desks, and 68 desks were sent.

Members of the Charles City Homes for Haiti group that went down this past winter helped assemble the desks. They also rebuilt the roof on the chapel, installed hurricane-proof solar panels and provided medical checkups to all the Imagine Missions kids and to people in the area through a mobile clinic.

In March this year, Jacob and a group of Alpha Delta Kappa members traveled to Haiti for the dedication of the school.

As do most people who travel to the mission, they each packed two suitcases — one with their clothes and personal belongings, the other with supplies for the mission, especially school supplies since the sorority consists of teachers and former teachers, Jacob said.

The group took pens and paper, tote bags and lots of books — “teachers are going to donate books to kids,” Jacob said. They took 41 reams of paper — enough for a ream for every teacher, because “paper is like gold there.”

While in Haiti the group also held in-service sessions with the teachers, helping them develop more collaborative teaching methods and holding team-building exercises.

Now, Jacob has written a proposal for a second grant from the sorority, for funds to build dormitories for students who turn 18 and are no longer allowed to live in the orphanage but who haven’t finished their schooling.

The proposal is to build four girls dorms and four boys dorms out of the Sukup Safe-T-Homes, plus one for a kitchen and bathroom and community center.

That proposal is going up against two other projects again, from India and Tanzania. Results of the vote will be known in mid-August, Jacob said.

She said right now she has no definite plans to return to Haiti, although if the latest grant proposal is approved, she probably will.