The Pilgrim Foundation has been contributing to Haiti since about 2009. This year, the country is currently in the worst season of political unrest in decades - including a fuel shortage which is causing a humanitarian crisis. In our years supporting Haitians we have witnessed:
2 earthquakes
Hurricane Matthew and many others
2 presidential elections
1 presidential assassination
A cholera epidemic and COVID-19
Currently about 20% of our annual giving goes to Haiti. People regularly ask me: Has all your work been undone? Why continue supporting Haiti? My answer is NO it has not been undone but our outcomes are different. God’s ways are not our ways.
For example, we set out with the scholarship program to graduate students from college and ensure employability. During seasons of calm, yes that definitely happens. We have a significant number of fully employed students from our program. But in this season of challenge we are getting different outcomes.
Since schools are closed and they are limited to student housing, they are becoming very proficient in English (more time to practice), learning how to prepare for disaster now that they have some financial resources from their student stipend, having book clubs to develop their faith, movie discussion nights, developing long term planning and critical thinking skills by building daily and weekly schedules, and managing stress in healthy ways. These are all skills that were not the focus when they were fully enrolled in classes, but are proving vitally important. School WILL reopen and we want them to be ready when that happens!
Another project is a company we support as they grow their business. Because of stable grant support they can move operations to the DR temporarily and keep their Haitian employees working. Without those business grants they would have had to close. We never dreamed they'd need to move operations, but they have built great relationships that are willing to share their working space with them.
Through this season God has brought John 1:5 to mind daily and I shared it with our Haitian staff this week. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it”. We continue to see remarkable perseverance among non-profit leaders in Haiti and in the college students we support. How could we leave them now? They keep showing up for Zoom meetings, traversing flooded streets and fiery barricades to continue the work. They are serving their communities to the best of their ability and are NOT the youth you see on the news rioting in the streets.