Day 1 - Port Au Prince

I arrived in Haiti at about 11.30am this morning but I didn’t manage to catch up with the others till about lunch time. My first experience was one of Compassions Intervention Projects. (This means that it is not run by compassion but that they help out with the initial funds.) We headed to a school for Restevek children. Restevek children are children who have been given away by their own families in hope that they’ll have a better life. In reality, however, it is anything but. They live with another family and they clean the house, do the washing, and fetch water... Just think of all the jobs that kids at home complain about or that we would never get them to do and they do it! Generally these children are not given the opportunity to go to school as in Haiti you have to pay. It only works out as £1 a week but nearly every family struggle to afford it for their own kids, never mind paying it for these children.

This school happens later in the day to allow the children to do their ‘chores’ so that the people that they live with allow them to come. The school was incredible, the children were all beautiful, but there is a huge sadness when you think about what they have to cope with. The school teaches them vocational activities such as hair dressing, plumbing and cooking as well as basic subjects. The children ranged from the ages of 10-16 years old, a lot of the children tend to run away from their host families after that. We headed to the roof of the building as it gave you a view of the surrounding area. One thing that struck me was one little boy flying his kite on the roof of his house. This consisted of a paper plate and a piece of string, but he thought it was just wonderful!

That evening we had dinner with some children who had come up through Compassions child sponsorship programme and were now apart of “Leadership Development Program” (102) for kids who excel and at age 18 they are given a scholarship. Some of these children where studying economics, nursing and civil engineering with a hope of giving back to their country. We had one of these pupils at our table! His name was Max and he told us all how he was one of 14 children and that we had been sponsored by compassion since he was about 5years old. He really is one of the lucky ones! It is such a priviledge to be here and see the fantastic work that compassion is doing with children throughout their life! It is not just a one off aid… it’s full commitment to help them to understand that they can have dreams beyond when the next meal is coming from, and possibly even fulfil a few.

Oh we have body guards that accompany us everywhere we go. Three Haitian SAS.