Preface to Trip to Haiti - November 2012

My posts for my Haiti trip from 11/12/12 - 11/19/12 will be on these pages.
I am part of a 12-person team visiting Haiti and Vilaj Espwa (Hope Village) in Les Cayes, Haiti.
Free the Kids is the organization that runs the orphanage that houses over 600 kids.
Here is my post on Facebook detailing Project Hope (Pwoje Espwa).


To all my FB friends... in case you don't already know, I am going a mission trip to Haiti (beginning on Nov. 12) as part of a group of 12 dedicated, caring people (headed by Sue Valiton).
Our mission is to visit an orphanage in Les Cayes (Hope Village or Vilaj Espwa in Haitian Creole). http://www.freethekids.org/
Our trip is for 8 days, and will be working with the 600+ kids who are housed, fed, clothed, schooled and trained by the staff there. Each person in our group will be bringing two-50 lb totes filled with donated goods as requested by the staff, in addition to a used laptop in a backpack.
We have been fundraising for more than 6 months to help raise enough funds to provide these kids with things they desperately need. If you haven't already given and have the means to and would like to donate to our cause, there are various ways to help.
1. You could send me a cash donation via Paypal to tom@tomandrosie.com which would be used by our team to fill the bags we are personally bringing to the kids.
2. For a tax deductible donation, you could donate via their website. On the main page, there is a secure link found in the upper right corner "Donate - Click Here".

Again, thanks for all the donations, good wishes and most of all prayers for our safe journey, and especially prayers for the kids; and especially the staff and Father Marc for all that they do on a daily basis to help the people of Haiti.
Thanks and God Bless you.

The program that Father Marc Boisvert started in 1998 is a heartwarming story of hearing God's calling and acting on it... he is truly making a difference in a country that needs more help today than ever before; especially due to the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that devastated the country on January 12th, 2010.

You can follow Father Marc's blog and watch the great things that go on in the Les Cayes community of Project Hope.

I am the official IT guy for this trip... taking the 12 donated laptops and preparing them to be personally transported to Haiti by our 12-member team and handed off to the staff at Project Hope.

We are planning a webcast from Haiti to St. Hubert's the weekend we are in Haiti ( 11/17, 18) so the donors in our Catholic Faith Community can see first-hand what we are doing and the human impact of their donations and to see the kids LIVE via the Internet. (Of course, this is all dependent on the available bandwidth and the various components of cyberspace properly working at the time we need them to be working.)

I will also be doing some computer and software application training with certain identified 'technicians' (I presume some of the older students) at Project Hope and helping in any other way that I can during our brief stay. We will also be helping with the painting of the girls' dome houses so that some of the boys can earn money doing the work.

The twelve of us are staying at the guest house on the compound and have several activities planned for the kids throughout the week we are there.

I will plan on updating this blog through the week whenever possible.

Tom