In the movies, directors sometimes use “timepieces.” A puppy is a good example of this. As time advances in the film, we see the puppy grow to a frisky young dog, a reliable mature dog, and a slow-moving older dog. This tells us the human characters are getting older as well. We never need a date or year. We understand how much time has passed.
At the orphanage, I have my own timepieces. They are the handful of kids who were there when I took over operations nearly 12 years ago, in 2010. Two kids in particular.
Appoloste and Nahoum.
I lump them together because when I arrived, they were always together. A pair of five-year-old boys, constantly playing, wrestling, eating and napping in unison. Nahoum was quiet, almost to the point of silence, staring at me and the others I brought down to help, until I caught his glaze and he lit up with a guilty smile that crinkled his eyes.
Appoloste was a clown from the start. He made faces. He stuck out his tongue. And he never stopped following me around. Some kids just attach to you. There’s no explaining why. You become a pair of magnets. Appoloste was mine.
“You hungry?” I would ask.
He didn’t understand the words, but he definitely understood the location (the kitchen) and the chocolate chip cookie in my hands. He nodded enthusiastically. This went on for a few days.
Then, one afternoon, we were out in the yard, and he pulled on my pants leg and looked up with a gap-toothed smile.
“Me hungry,” he said.
His first words in English.
Nahoum and Appoloste, 2010 and 2021 // Photo credit 2021: Danielle Cutillo // Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Over the years, I would mark my time by how Appoloste and Nahoum were growing. I went from reading them books and kissing them goodnight to them reading their own books and asking if they could keep the lights on past 10 p.m.
Their bodies changed. Their voices went from squeals to sopranos to the inevitable downward tug of puberty. Appoloste sprung up like a reed, and every month he would measure himself against me.
“You’re going to be taller than me one day,” I’d say, and he’d smile, but always say “Nah.”
Appoloste through the years // Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Nahoum matured into a stockier frame. I remember one time hugging him, he must have been 12 or so, and feeling the newly bulging muscles of his back and shoulders. What happened to the scrawny, silent kid, watching me from afar? He became a voracious reader and developed a real talent for art. I’d see Nahoum sitting at a table by himself, engrossed in a paperback or a drawing pad. I’d go over and rub his head and say, “Look at how mature you are” and he’d turn and flash that smile that crinkles his eyes and makes his face all young again.
Appoloste became a performer. He earned the nickname “Apple Sauce.” He was always dancing as he walked, or singing the chorus of a song, bursting out the words as if showing the world he knew them. At Christmas pageants he’d try for a plum part. During devotions, he sang with gusto.
But deep down he remained the same kid I first encountered: sweet, loving, shy in his own way, hungry for attention, and devoted, for some reason, to being around me as much as he could. When he finally grew taller than me – not by much, but he did – I congratulated him and he smiled, but he didn’t seem all that happy. I think part of him never wanted to reach that milestone.
Part of me didn’t, either.
Photo inception of Nahoum and Appoloste // Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Lately, I have been talking with Nahoum and Appoloste about college. For years, each time I’d depart, they’d ask to go to the airport with me.
“Not yet,” I’d always say. “But one day, you’re going to get in that car with me and come to America for college. And I’ll visit you all the time and we’ll have dinner at my house every Sunday night and I’ll be so proud of you both.”
That day is actually coming. I cannot believe how speedily it has arrived. Appoloste — who is one of our two lead singers in the boys band the “Hermanos Brothers” — has developed a real skill for fixing household devices and designing mechanical things. He wants to study engineering.
Nahoum, whose art talent is good enough to warrant a special school, has lately been talking about becoming a chef. I told him “Fine, but you’re going to college first.”
In blurting that out, I became my parents.
And in so many ways, these boys had become my kids.
They have marked my life, month by month, since they were barely old enough for kindergarten. I can look at photos and know what year it was by the softness of their faces, by their haircuts, by the long pants they are wearing, or the way they fill out a tight t-shirt.
Nahoum through the years // Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Appoloste and Nahoum turned 17 this year. By next fall, they’ll be legal adults. Gone are the days of lifting and carrying them, of their high-pitched giggles, of chocolate chip cookies and “Me hungry” and putting them to bed at night with a story and a kiss.
They are my timepieces. And time, which can move so slowly in this hot, impoverished country, still races by with children, faster than you realize, faster than you want.
This was a special week at the orphanage. School started.
I know in America the start of school means the death of summer. The end of fun. Back to the grind. Not in our place. School here is greeted like an old friend.
Or in some cases, a new one.
High-fives on the first day of school / Photo credit: Danielle Cutillo / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Ten years ago, we opened our school — or I should say we built it, and then we opened it. Using our crew plus outside laborers, we constructed, from the ground up, a three-room building along the far wall of the property. It was a simple cinder block structure. We put carpet squares on the floors and blackboards on the walls. We painted the outside a buttercup yellow.
But when we cut the ribbon to mark the occasion, we had done much more than christen a building. We had shifted to a new plane of existence. Our possibilities soared. The orphanage went from keeping kids alive to giving them a shot at a future.
Understand that in Haiti, school is precious, and mostly a purview of the rich. You cannot attend school without paying money, and you cannot attend the best schools without paying a lot of money. The wealthy in Haiti may pay in excess of $10,000 a year to send their kids to private school. Meanwhile, poor children are turned away at public schools if they cannot pay the tuition in advance, or if the child has the wrong shoes, or slacks, or shirt. If you start paying but have to stop, they will turn you away at the door.
When I arrived in Haiti in 2010, few of the kids at the orphanage attended outside school. Some took classes with an older female French teacher, who came by during the week. But it was hardly formal education. And hardly a ticket to opportunity.
Which is why the start of school each year these days is more than just a date on the September calendar for us. Seeing the new kids we admitted over the summer now in their bright blue t-shirts, ready to start learning for the first time in their lives, is a reminder that we can do something rare here.
We can challenge the minds of kids whom others cast aside, and lift those kids to a level where one day they never have to worry about having to choose between feeding their children or educating them.
First day of school, 2021 / Photo credit: Danielle Cutillo / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
“It’s a beautiful morning,
it’s a beautiful day,
Walking with Jesus,
every step of the way…”
I love the tradition of going to school at our place. The kids put on special t-shirts and pants (color-coordinated according to their level.) They line up outside the kitchen just before 8 a.m. They sing a morning song or two. And then, upon the signal, they march off with their teachers to their area of study. They don’t drag. They don’t sulk. More often than not, they are skipping or running. When people ask us, “How come your kids are so excited to go to school every day?” I answer, “Because it gives them something to do.”
Remember, we are not ripping them away from their PlayStations, their TV’s, or their posting on Instagram. They don’t have any of that. They play outside all day long, and all weekend long, so there’s no heartbreak over losing that for a classroom. On the contrary, school to them is a challenge. A chance to excel at something. And it’s fun.
For that, I have to thank my sister.
Her name is Cara Nesser — “Miss Cara” to everyone in Haiti – and she is two years older than me and has been teaching ever since we were kids in New Jersey and she set up “school” in the backyard for my little brother and me. She’s earned advanced degrees in education. She’s done curriculums and programming in different parts of the world. Teaching has been her life and her passion.
And so, back in 2011, I called her up.
“Listen,” I said, “I have a proposal. Don’t say no. Just hear me out….”
Cara Nesser (l), school director / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
How can I put this? She didn’t exactly leap at the idea. Starting a school in Haiti? A place she’d never been? A language she didn’t speak? And she was living overseas at the time. Just getting to Haiti would take days.
But deep down I knew, if I could get her to meet our kids, her natural love of children and education would take over.
And that’s pretty much what happened. The kids lit up when she met them. They sponged onto any book she opened. And like pulling an astronaut’s safety cord, we tugged at Cara until we guided her from outer space into the mothership. She became our school director. And she’s been running things ever since.
I remember our first day of school, ten years back, Cara and I both beaming proudly. Kids made figures on popsicle sticks, did games with a parachute, and read the words “Today is your first day of school” off a chalkboard. They were wide-eyed and giddy and really small.
First day of school, October 31, 2011 // Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Today many of those same kids are a year away from going to college in America. The school itself has expanded physically beyond the three classrooms to the chapel, the gazebo, the balcony above the yard and sometimes to the dorms. We are in desperate need of growth — another reason to find a new place — but for now, we just keep expanding. We add teachers every year. The current ratio is one teacher for every five kids. Sometimes I bemoan how much the school is costing in staffing, but Cara will say, “Yeah, but she’s a really good teacher, I don’t want to lose out on her…” and next thing I know, we have a new staff member.
Meanwhile, our curriculum is not what you’d expect from a dusty, pot-holed, baking-hot little orphanage. We have three divisions — lower school, primary school, and upper school — and the classes range from basic literacy and numbers to World Literature, Cultural Geography, Meteorology, Physics, Human Anatomy, Geometry and Sign Language. We also have specialized classes in engineering, media, music theory, Spanish and woodworking.
Joy in the work in the first day of school / Photo credits: Danielle Cutillo / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
We teach in English, French, Creole and sometimes Portuguese (thanks to a great Brazilian teacher). By the time they reach the equivalent of junior high, our kids are pretty fluent in at least three languages. And come high school years, they are taking TOEFL preparation as a regular class, in order to do well on that test that is the gateway to their studying at universities in the U.S.
And that’s the thing. More than any academic accomplishment, what stands out with school at our orphanage is the pure love of learning. The sheer excitement of starting a class. School is never something to be endured. It’s something to be explored. I think back to the way I used to walk to school in the mornings, dreading a test, wishing it would snow, and I realize I could never — most of us in America could never — appreciate what school means in this hot and often forgotten country. “Giddy” is not often the word you associate with the first day of school, but it is at our place. The kids race in. The doors shut behind them. The learning starts. The world opens.
This is what it means to be the youngest child at our orphanage: your feet never touch the ground.
You are passed from one set of arms to another, one doting teen to another, one nanny to another, one visitor to another.
The oldest child at the Have Faith Haiti orphanage has a certain status, some special privileges, some baked-in authority. But the youngest gets all the attention. It has been this way since I arrived. I have seen it writ large in the last few weeks.
The youngest child we ever took in was named Bettinie — or Babu, as she is better known. Her grandmother brought her to us, desperate for help. She told us she was almost three, and while she looked kind of small for that age, we were sympathetic to her poor conditions and accepted her. Months later, when we finally get ahold of her birth certificate, we realized the grandmother had slightly exaggerated. Babu was not three.
She was one and a half.
So for the next few years of her existence, everyone doted on her. She was, after all, so young by comparison to the others. The teenaged boys would lift her high over their heads until she squealed, and the teenaged girls would hold her in their laps during evening devotion, during which she would inevitably fall asleep. It was a beautiful thing to watch, these budding young women who for the most part, had known no motherly affection of their own, instinctively showing it to little Babu. The only problem was there was only one of her to go around.
In time, Babu grew — she is now 12-years-old — and the title of “youngest kid at the mission” was passed on to others. This speaks to a question I often get “What age do you take children in?”
Babu in 2011 (left) / Babu holding Rosemyca in 2021 / Photo credit: Danielle Cutillo / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Well, like everything is this incredible journey, we had to learn our lessons the hard way. At first, we sought children in the 5 – 6-year-old range. Our (naïve) thinking was that they already had developed certain language skills, certain physical skills and emotional maturities. And — funny as it sounds — they were potty trained. Wetting the bed is a huge issue at any orphanage, especially if you have a limited supply of mattresses.
What we learned, however, was that with age comes other problems. The majority of 5 or 6-year-olds we were taking in, we glumly discovered, had been sexually abused. Especially the girls. It was rampant. We learned this through agitated behavior, unusual physical affection issues (too reticent to be touched, or too anxious) and some good work by doctors and psychological specialists. Nearly all of the kids had been sleeping in shared spaces with older siblings, uncles, grandparents, family friends. In many cases, this resulted in the abuse, as well as heightened awareness of sexual behavior (as I often tell visitors, people don’t stop having sex just because there are children living in the tent, or the one-room shack. The kids end up seeing a lot of things they don’t understand.)
As a result, we slid our scale down, to 4-year-olds, 3-year-olds, and now, what is more common, 2-year-olds. This inadvertently created a new competition: cutest — and smallest — new addition.
Remember that our kids never get to see Mommy pregnant. They never get the speech about “You’re going to have a new baby sister. You need to be nice and share.” At our place, it works more abruptly. One day, suddenly, we have a new 2-year-old. And the cooing and fussing begins.
Jerry / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Recently, that title belonged to a round-faced beaming little boy named Jerry. He came to us through a staff member who knew of his plight (no father, a mother with medical issues) and for months after his arrival, Jerry, who is ridiculously cute, merely had to lift his arms and someone would swoop him up. “Oooh, Jerrrrr-y!” the kids would exclaim. They all but fought over holding him, and he didn’t seem to mind a bit. At one point, I had to tell our kids, “You need to put him down and let him learn how to walk!”
Jerry held the crown for a while, and life for him was one blissful lap after another. Then, recently, we accepted a couple of kids from a nearby orphanage that had been struggling. Jerry was about to turn four, and these new ones, Kim (a boy) and Malayka (a girl) were barely three. The older kids took turns passing the new little ones around, and I could see a look on Jerry’s face that, were it a cartoon bubble, might read: “Whoa! What just happened?”
Jerry / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
A few months later, we took in a half a dozen new children from the western regions of Mirogoane and Les Cayes, and they were even younger. One, a quiet, big-eyed boy named Belcome (who we now call Jeff; don’t ask) was only two, thin and easily lifted. And boy, was he lifted!
And then, last month, came Djoulisa, who was just slightly past 18-months-old, still in a diaper. She opened her arms and fell into a few dozen embraces, and that was that. A new Boss Baby had taken over. By this point, Jerry was walking around (walking! the very idea of it!) and looking for the complaints department.
Djoulisa on her first day, crying on a nanny’s shoulder / Photo credit: Danielle Cutillo / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Meanwhile, I don’t know which astonishes me more. The pure and immediate love our older kids (and not just the teens, kids as young as seven or eight) show their new, tiny brothers and sisters, or the incredible adaptability of the infants themselves, who laugh and giggle and rest their heads on all these new shoulders as if they had been sleeping there forever.
All I know is that, while the expression is “It’s good to be the King”, around our place, it’s more like “It’s good to be the baby.” As Edgar Winter once sang, “Come on and take a free ride.” You’ll never have to touch the earth — at least until the next littler one arrives.
***
The baby bunch / Photo credit: Danielle Cutillo / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Feature image photo credit: Danielle Cutillo / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
👋 and welcome to “Life at the Orphanage,” a newsletter about life for the 50+ children of Have Faith Haiti.
This is the tale of two fates.
The first belongs to a little Haitian boy whose name is Archange Chery. He was brought to us a few months ago, when we visited Les Cayes. The man bringing the boy was his grandfather, Pierre Chery, whose fate is the second in this story.
Pierre, a thin man with bags under his eyes, told us the boy’s mother, his daughter, had disappeared shortly after giving birth. The boy’s father was unknown. Pierre had been trying to raise Archange for nearly three years but with seven other people living in a cramped structure in the middle of the woods, the little boy had no chance. There wasn’t enough food or water to go around. He would never be fed well. Never get educated. He was already withering and infested with scabies.
We took him into our orphanage two months ago. Five weeks later, a massive 7.2 earthquake hit Haiti, and hardest hit area was the Les Cayes region, where Archange used to live and where Pierre still does.
At the time of the quake, a Saturday morning, Pierre was in church, attending a funeral for a woman from the community who had died when the baby she was carrying arrived too soon. The child died. The mother died. Then, in a twist of fate that could only be called “Haitian,” during the funeral service, the earth shook and the walls of the church crumbled.
“Everybody ran,” Pierre says. “I ran. The walls were falling. Pieces of rock came down. I tried to pull some people from under the (crushed) walls. Some of them were already dead.”
When he finally made it back to his ramshackle home, “Everything was destroyed. There was nothing left.”
The collapsed church. Featured image shows the interior.
Had little Archange still been living with his grandfather, there’s a chance he would have been in that structure, or that church, and he might not be alive today.
Instead, as Pierre and the others scraped through the rubble of their flattened home, Archange played innocently in the yard of our orphanage, unaware of the seismic event that shaken his roots forever.
Luck favors the timely in Haiti, and the boy escaped just in time.
The grandfather did not.
A thousand natural shocks
It is this dichotomy that haunts me in Haiti. For nearly 12 years, we have been visiting shattered homes, crushed dwellings, areas devastated by natural disasters, earthquakes and hurricanes. Usually we wind up leaving these places with children. Last weekend, we went to the families who remained.
Because I thought it important that our older kids understand what goes on outside our gates, I brought 12 of them with me over several days. We went to Jeremie and Les Cayes, two of the hardest hit regions in the recent quake. We visited the extended families of the children who are part of ours. It seemed the right thing to do.
In Les Cayes we rented an old car that rattled as it drove and made our way over uneven stony paths that wound through the thickets of trees, until we reached a collection of dwellings. These are places that no one bothers with, places that you can only find if you know someone who lives there. Ramshackle domiciles of tin and metal and cinderblock, many of which — thanks to the earthquake — are now piles of useless debris.
It was here that we found Pierre.
The undiscovered country
“Have you gotten any help from the government?” I asked him.
“No.”
“From any NGO?”
“No.”
“No help from anyone?”
“No.”
The village where Pierre lives is called Edward, named after the grandfather of a resident who had lived and died there decades ago. It is hard to call it a village, as there is no organization to the homes. There is one here, one there, then nothing over a hill, or around a bend, then another structure, then a brown dirt path, then another. Water comes from a communal well. There is no plumbing for toilets or sinks. You use the woods. Toilet paper is a luxury.
From tarp to tent
You would think fate would leave bad enough alone in such a place. But the earthquake flattened Pierre’s tiny house as if God’s fist itself had come down upon it. We gave him a tent that he set up in the shadow of the rubble. We gave him flashlights, sacks of food, bags of water and other staples. We gave him a solar light. Finally, we gave him a small envelope with some money inside.
He was beyond grateful. He said we were the only people who come to his aid. The only ones who seemed to even acknowledge his existence or the existence of the people he knew by name in their isolated outpost.
John Carey holds little Archange’s hand. / Photo by Danielle Cutillo / Courtesy of Have Faith Haiti
Meanwhile, Archange played with a soccer ball alongside his 50 new brothers and sisters. He is a round-faced, giggly kid, who is perpetually smiling. When we returned from the long day in Les Cayes, I sought him out, just to observe him. I watched him walking with a three year-old’s waddle. Saw him holding hands with one of our older boys. I wondered if, when he grew up, he would even remember coming here, or where he had been before. I doubt it. Many of our kids ignite their memory banks with their arrival at the orphanage. What preceded that moment is a story someone else tells them.
But they are stories just the same, real ones, hard ones. Before we left the village of Edward, I showed a small video of Archange to his grandfather. In the video, Archange is eating a piece of cake from a paper plate. He licks his fingers to get all the frosting. He looks happy and content, and for a moment, as he watched, the wrinkles lifted from Pierre’s weary brow, and he looked the same.
Welcome to “Life at the Orphanage,” a newsletter about life for the 50+ children of Have Faith Haiti. Keep up with me on Instagram and Facebook for surprise details from Haiti
When the 7.2 earthquake struck Haiti two weeks ago, a couple of young Haitians heard about it, read about it, and watched its destruction on TV. But they were not with their brothers and sisters to feel the ground move. They were in America, preparing to go to college.
Edney, Jhonas, Siem, and Kiki in Michigan.
A door opens. Edney Fanfan, 18, and Jhonas Nelus, 20, are the two most recent exports from our orphanage. They, like two others before them, are now in Michigan, attending a school called Madonna University, even as their fellow Haitians are digging out from a disaster. College in America is more than just an option for our kids. It’s their North Star. The pot of gold at the end of their rainbows. Every one of them is trying to get there.
Sunday night, we moved Jhonas and Edney into their dormitory apartment. The possessions they brought from Haiti fit in one bag. The rest — towels, blankets, desk lamps, etc. — my wife Janine and some friends shopped for.
To say in felt strange would be like saying soup is watery.
“Mr. Mitch, can you help me?” Edney said.
I entered the room to see him struggling with a fitted mattress cover.
“How does this go on?’’ he asked.
I helped him stretch it around the edges. Then I helped him put on a top sheet. And a blanket which sort of amused him. Blankets are hardly needed in Haiti, not when the room is steaming with humid air and the concrete walls seem to trap the entire day’s heat.
Edney and his new dorm room bed
We plugged in his desk lamp. We found a spot for his photo frame, which contained pictures of him with his brothers and sisters from the orphanage. He put his pens on the desk and a laundry bag in the closet. That pretty much did it.
I remembered the day I moved into college. I needed family members to help carry a giant trunk. I brought milk crates filled with albums. The biggest thing, it seemed, was where I set up my stereo system and how far apart I could set my speakers. Also, what posters would adorn my walls (John Belushi, Albert Einstein, Rocky.)
With Edney and Jhonas, there were no posters. No stereo system. No speakers. Within half an hour, they were all moved in. Then came the waiting in this strange, spacious place. When you’ve never had a room of your own, you’re not sure what to make of it at first. Gone is the constant drone of conversation, the sight of another person’s dirty clothes, or the snoring at night that proves you are surrounded.
“How do you like sleeping on your own? I will later ask Edney.
‘’It’s kind of lonely,” he will say.
Jhonas at his new desk
“What are you going to do when you graduate our high school?” I sometimes yell when the kids are gathered in the gazebo.
“Go to college!” they yell back.
“And where will you go to college?”
“Michigan!”
OK. So that last part, I admit, is me being possessive. The transition from sleeping every night with 11 other orphans to having your own bed, mini-fridge and college email account is jolting. It streaks by you, new thing after new thing, like watercolors bleeding into one another. I guess I want to be part of the canvass. The kids come over most weekends, and since the college is nearby, we are able to keep up with their lives and issues.
Only one percent of Haitians ever go to college. Far fewer than that ever leave the country to do so. You will not find large Haitian populations at American universities. But they bring a unique perspective to education, starting with the fact that up to that point, someone had to pay for every class they took. School is not free in Haiti, not even kindergarten or grade school. Since Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, this means many of its children only go to school sporadically — when there is money to pay for that month — or they never go at all.
So there was no problem getting Edney and Jhonas excited for their classes. They had their schedules memorized. They mapped out where to go. When their alarm clocks went off Monday morning (another new purchase; who needs alarm clocks in an orphanage?) they were up and out the door well before they needed to be.
Two days later, we were packing up supplies to go to Haiti. This trip will be largely about aid, flying to the coastal cities of Jeremie and Aux Cayes, both rocked by the recent earthquake, to tend to the poor families of our children, many of whom lost their dwellings and possessions. Tents for the homeless, food for the hungry, lights for those in the dark, these all filled our garage floor and soon will fill our vehicles on the island.
Against this backdrop, going to college seems like another planet. Yet that’s how it is. Whenever one of our kids comes north for higher education, there is a pull that is beyond homesickness or missing loved ones. It is a pull tinged with guilt, especially when a disaster strikes Haiti, as it too often does. You feel like you are getting a chance to improve your mind with study while your countrymen are just trying to survive the morning.
Siem LaFleur, who I have written about and whose family lost its home in Aux Cayes, is torn between such obligations. He went back down to Haiti the week before school started, returned the day before classes, and will go back to Haiti again this weekend to try and help rebuild his mother’s destroyed home, before returning on Labor Day for classes he knows he can’t miss.
A small portrait of relief packages provided to families in Aux Cayes — food, tents, lighting, and other general supplies — made possible through your ongoing support. Siem led relief efforts last week. More is headed there over the next few days.
This is the yin and yang of academic opportunity for our kids, all of whom are required to return to Haiti once their degrees have been earned and to work at the orphanage for two years, as a way of giving back.
That last part is easy. They want to come back. Haiti never leaves their hearts, no matter how spacious a dorm room feels, or how impressed they are with Wifi that actually works.
“When you get down there tomorrow,” Edney asks, “can we call you so we can talk to the kids?’’
“Sure,” I say.
He smiles, as if relieved. They say the transition to college is challenging. Try trading 50-plus brothers and sisters for a universe you only imagined weeks earlier. A door opens. You walk through. But it stays open even as you pass, and the voices you left behind beckon you, comfort you, and leave you yearning.
Make your check payable to “Have Faith Haiti Mission” and send to
Have Faith Haiti Mission
c/o A Hole in the Roof Foundation
29836 Telegraph Road
Southfield, MI 48034
Have Faith Haiti is operated by the A Hole in the Roof Foundation, a 501(c)(3) org (TAX ID# 27-0609504). Donations are tax deductible.
About the Mission
The Have Faith Haiti Mission is a special place of love and caring, dedicated to the safety, education, health and spiritual development of Haiti’s impoverished children and orphans. You can learn more here.
