Agriculture Program in St. Suzanne

The shade nursery built during the 2007 summer mission trip is being put to good use. Bags of trees are ready to plant. The farmers are anxious to continue the program to make a difference in their village.

The lack of trees is a huge problem all over Haiti. Deforestation, caused by cutting trees to make charcoal for cooking, also causes problems with erosion, water pollution and flooding. The erosion of the top soil affects the quality of the soil, making it much harder to grow crops.

In November 2007, Judge John Laurent and Patricia attended a worldwide ECHO conference focused on implementing third world agricultural problems. At the conference they met a group of 4 Haitians from Dezam that did a presentation about "Ti Fores" (little forest). The purpose of Ti Fore is to grow a mix of fruit, lumber and fast growing trees in a confined area. This helps with reforestation, erosion, and provides farmers with long term fruit crops and short term cash crops. As a result, a seminar was set up with this group coming to teach the St. Suzanne farmers how to implement this in their village. It was a huge success. All 32 farmers are committed to planting Ti Fores and teaching all of their neighbors to do the same thing.

PET Wheelchairs Make a Difference!

Donated PET wheelchairs make a huge difference in the life of handicapped villagers. These chairs are colorful and work by using a hand pulley system. All the chairs donated to HBHH were given away very quickly and are in great demand. We hope to be able to obtain more to help others that need help getting around.

Visit to Food for the Poor

Judge John Laurent, Patricia and Fr. Medenel meet with Fr. Duken (pictured here) in Cap Haitian, Haiti. Fr. Duken showed them the new village that just opened with houses for the poor. The group toured one of the nurseries Food for the Poor has that raises fruit trees. Fr. Duken will supply 1,000-2,000 fruit trees for HBHH to plant during the June 2008 mission trip.

Village buildings get face lift!

You can see a big difference of the church before and after. The St. Suzanne Church had fresh plaster put on the surface to stop the deterioration and structural problems that existed. Paint was donated by HBHH and shipped to Haiti and the work was done by the villagers. It has made a huge difference on the church and on the parish building. Everyone was very happy with the results!

New bathroom complete at St. Suzanne School

Fr. Medenel proudly shows the new bathrooms that were made available by the hard work of Tampa's Jesuit Key Club members last year.

This bathroom was just completed days before our arrival in St. Suzanne, Haiti. The new bathrooms has stalls on both sides, five for boys and five for girls. Everyone is so happy and grateful for these new facilities.

The new bathrooms at the Christ the King School in Cotelette, Haiti will be finished and ready for use in early April.

Florida parish moves forward with twinning

Fr. Joseph Waters, pastor of Corpus Christi Parish in Temple Terrace, FL along with Terry Boehm and Mike Kovac join Patricia on her February trip to Haiti. This was Fr. Waters' first trip to his twinned in Dilaire, Haiti, though Fr. Janvier had made two trips to Tampa to meet the parishioners of Corpus Christi.

The group flew in with Patricia to Cap Haitian and spent three days in Haiti. Their first stop was in St. Suzanne where they met with Fr. Mednel and toured the works of HBHH to see what might be possible in Dilaire. Then, they travelled to Dilaire to learn the needs of the parish by meeting with Fr. Janvier and the parish leadership. The final stop on their trip was at the Bishop’s residence in Fort Liberte where they stayed the night and spoke with Bishop Chibly Langlois about the best way to help Fr. Janvier.