New Life to the Children

Did you know there are more slaves today than at any time in human history? Haiti, being the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, is especially vulnerable. Orphaned and impoverished children often fall into the hands of exploiters. They find themselves picked up and sold to serve as “restaveks”. The word in Creole literally means “stay with”. They may be promised a home, food and school but usually find themselves enslaved with little to eat, long hours of tedious labor, physical, emotional, sexual abuse and no hope of an education.

A number of years ago a Haitian brick layer, living in the slums of Port-au-Prince, and his wife (we all call her Momma) began aiding destitute children in the neighborhoods by feeding and giving them a safe place to live. Their own family living in extreme poverty used any extra money they could come up with to buy food for these children; housing them within their own small house and worked out a system whereby the children could get an education. After he died, “Momma” carried on the work by getting her sons and daughters, neighborhood widows, churches of the slums and anyone who would to help. What they called “New life to the Children” was born. However with Caribbean storms destroying housing; the needs of destitute children eventually out stripped the ability of this community of family and friends to provide shelter for all the children.

Mrs. Joissaint “Momma” is one of our heroes.

Imagine this; Port-au-Prince, Haiti is home to almost 3 million people. At night it feels more like an ancient city or an endless campground than a 21st century metropolis. Imagine all electricity is off, imagine all your water being carried in, balanced atop someone’s head, Imagine myriads of alleys and passageways, small brick houses juxtaposed endlessly up the side of the mountain, goats, dogs, palm trees, the smell of food cooking, trash burning, and urine. Imagine the rains starting up many evenings. How welcome the cooling rain is. Everyone goes out to shower and play, laughing, throwing buckets full of water on each other and playing slip and slide on patches of cement.

Now imagine you’re a child, orphaned and destitute and you sleep on the ground under a tarp because there is no more room inside the floor of the 11’x22’ home you live at with 65 other children. Imagine having to stand for hours, sometimes all night waiting for the rain to stop so you can lie on the ground and go to sleep. The only problem is the ground is still wet. Imagine the very real danger of rape or being picked up for slave labor if you venture outside the small tin enclosure that surrounds the shanty house.

Early evening rains in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Imagine this: within a week, a new home completed and you are moving in. A home with safe drinking water, sanitary toilets and solar powered lights so you no longer spend the evenings sitting (or standing) in the dark. Imagine an orphanage that would not institutionalize you because you are a destitute child, but where you could live in a real home, with a real family and real love to grow up in. Imagine for the first time you have a bed to sleep in.

Imagine this. Celebrating the completion of a new home with the first real toys you ever had, maybe a tricycle, a wagon, a truck or soccer ball. Imagine now having a place to play soccer on the grass. Imagine the celebrating you and your friends would do with drums and instruments because now there is room to play them and a house to put them in. Imagine dancing on the roofs (because they are designed for such). Imagine going up on the hill above the house and singing across the valley, singing across the Caribbean Ocean, singing the songs you learned, songs of faith and songs of love, songs of thanksgiving for a home you have been waiting years to have built, songs of thanks for the bed you will now sleep in.

Children in Haiti with their first toys ever.

Additional information:

On a trip to Haiti In 2000 my older son, Jordan, briefly met Momma’s son, Josue. Several years latter (2006) Josue wrote, asking if our small church in California could help them in any way purchase a piece of land so they could build a home where orphaned children could live with families.
In 2006 my other son, Dane, and I went to Haiti to evaluate the situation. By then the number of children they needed to feed and house had grown to well over 100, staying in several locations, many still sleeping on the ground under tarps.
It is now 2009 and we have been able to purchase land outside of Port-au-Prince, built the security wall and start construction of two houses, but the community waits for a miracle to finish the houses and give the children their home.

With sincerity,
Donald Skow and “New Life to the Children”, (A grass roots movement to rescue at-risk children encountering extreme poverty in Haiti)



Suggested reading; “A Crime so Monstrous” by E. Benjamin Skinner and “Not for Sale” by David Batstone.