Today’s Guest Blog was written by The Hands and Feet Project, a non-profit organization started in 2004 by a Christian Rock band to offer Haitian orphans a safe place to grow up, with the hopes that those orphans will one day be able to help bring peace and positive change to their Country and it’s current state of unrest, poverty, and violence.  While children living at Hands and Feet are not available for adoption, they are welcomed to be sponsored.

 UPDATE:

Our children's village in Haiti has been rocked by 3 hurricanes in a row. We have estimated the damage to be at around $100,000 due to flood waters and an unbelievable amount of rock that the new river pushed into our property. Thankfully all of our staff and children are safe! They are just a little crowded right now as two of the children's houses were left with a foot of mud and water line up to 4 feet high.Many communities in Haiti were not so lucky.

Please consider helping us as we re-build our property and build a large retaining wall for our property, the school next to us (providing a great education for 850 children), and surrounding neighbors. We have taken this project on because if we don't, our entire community could be destroyed by a future storm. Unfortunately, we can't just call the army corps of engineers to come build us a dam and some storm drains!

Please go to our website to see more pictures, a video of the storm, and to donate. There is a pretty crazy video that CBS showed on Sunday about the damage in Haiti. This is not our region, but gives you an idea of how devastating these storms are to a country with little infrastructure. You can watch it here

Thanks for reading...please pray for Haiti and help however you can.

Joel Griffith

Hands and Feet Project

PO Box 682105

Franklin, TN 37068

(877) 870-6175

www.handsandfeetproject.org

 Facts about Haiti:

• Haiti is the poorest country in the western Hemisphere.
• One out of five children die from preventable illnesses before reaching the age of five.
• Diarrhea is the leading cause of death for children under five
• Only 50% of the population have access to running water
• 300,000 child laborers
• 2,500 street children in Port au Prince alone.
• GNI per capita for Haiti is $450 (in 2005)
• Under-five mortality rate for Haiti is 120 (in 2005) 120 out of 1000 die before they are 5 years old. 
• Infant mortality rate for Haiti is 84 (in 2005) 84 out of 1000 die before the age of one.
• Life expectancy is 51
• 50% of the population lives on less than $1 a day.
• 80% of the population lives on less than $2 a day.

  - UNICEF and World Bank

   

Our Mission:

Hands and Feet Project exists to care for orphans, as well as to use pop culture to introduce the 1st world to the orphans of the rest of the world.

Our Vision:

To raise a generation of orphans raised by their own culture who will bring change to their country so that orphanages are empty and we are out of a job.

Hands and Feet Project, a 501c3 non-profit organization, is a children's village just outside of Jacmel, on the southern east coast of Haiti. Hands and Feet Project was started by the Christian band Audio Adrenaline in 2004. The land was purchased in late 2004, and construction began in early 2005. Our first little girl arrived in the spring of 2005, and we now care for 36 children ranging in age from 2 months to 9 years old.

We are currently building more houses in order to be able to help more children who have been abandoned and will probably have 40 children by the end of this year. We are hoping to replicate the model that is currently working in Haiti which brings artists/bands and orphanages together, with our next project that will be starting soon in Nicaragua.

Watch the video (part 1 and 2) of Christela's amazing rescue after being purposely dropped 30' into a public outhouse. You can read the first-hand account from one of the first rescuers on the scene on Hands and Feet Project's website.  After hearing of the situation, Hands and Feet committed not only to caring for the child, but covering all of her medical bills as well.

WARNING: VIDEO MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUNG and/or SENSITIVE AUDIENCES

Hands and Feet Core Values:

• We believe that the best thing for a child is to stay with their parents if it is a good situation. We will make every attempt to keep a child with their parents and will only adopt them into our children's village if they have been orphaned or abandoned and have nowhere else to go.
• Excellence, integrity and accountability in everything we do.
• Love - We believe that children need to be raised in a loving environment based on the love of Christ.
• Long-term commitment. We are committing to raise our children until they no longer need our assistance.
• Education/vocation. Our children will attend the best possible schools in order to learn and give back to their community, and give them every opportunity to excel in their gifts.
• Family model. We will strive to give our children a consistent family type atmosphere by keeping them with the same primary caretakers for as long as possible and housing them with the same other children. Our goal is to never remove kids out of that family unit.
• Partnership with other organizations who are the best at what they do.
• Commitment to the local community through:

       - export of area specific goods that promote growth of the local economy and help                 orphanage become self-sufficient 

       - use of local resources and labor

We are in need of MUCH prayer and financial support right now. Hurricane Gustav has turned our Children's Village into a rock quarry! With our property completely buried in approximately 4-5 FEET of mountain rock, we are doing the best we can to begin the clean-up process. Our supplies (food, clothes, diapers, formula, etc) have all been destroyed and both houses where the kids lived were flooded with four feet of water and are currently unlivable. All 36 kids are living in the main house with the nannies.

Above is a picture of our newly constructed [and now destroyed] depot, garage, supply house and apartment. Note the red in the middle... it is actually the roof of a very large truck that is now buried in the tons of rock that has poured down from the mountainside onto our property. This just begins to give you an idea of the massive job that lies ahead of us.

All images courtesy of The Hands and Feet Project