20 years and counting, The St Luke Foundation for Haiti (founded in 2000)
/Dear friends, dear family (after all the years together, the dividing line fades!)
(Just for your information, all green lines below are links if you click on them)
As we begin the last quarter of 2020, a year that has pushed the whole world to the brink and will likely establish a new world vision (a new and brighter north star), I am reflecting on our own tumultuous situation in Haiti, and the value of my own 33 years here.
I am privileged to be a priest of the Passionist Community (thepassionists.org) and I am grateful to my community for the generous permissions granted to for me the works I describe below.
I arrived in Haiti when I was 34 years old, and without knowing a single person, set out to work. I ponder the years now from the vantage point of being 67.
To make this a very short story, from my arrival in 1987 until the millennial year 2000, myself and some pretty amazing people were charged with creating, on behalf of Fr William Wasson and Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (NPH), dynamic programs for orphan and vulnerable children, and also a children’s hospital.
Both of these life-giving branches of the huge family tree that is NPH, still make enormous contributions to many children and young people, whom we first came to know because of the serious distress that marked their lives.
St Damien hospital began by confronting the twin disasters of severe malnutrition and HIV/AIDS, and has amazingly evolved to a specialty pediatric hospital that can adopt very fast to urgent needs, even to threats such as COVID 19.
I could absolutely regale you with stories of the heroic people who made Fr Wasson’s programs real, very often in the face of anguishing problems and hair-raising adventures.
Many of you have shared these with us.
I continued in a major leadership role in NPH Haiti from 1987 until 2017, and from that time my dedication remains at 200%, but my role has been supportive and advisory.
Because my modus operandi has always been to develop native leaders, the more we advanced toward this goal, the more freedom I had to get involved in the very poor margins of Port-au-Prince, especially as a priest and physician.
Those who joined me in this new work, and in fact were the catalysts for what it would become, were young graduates of NPH Haiti. There were many of them: a handful of great leaders and fistfuls of others who were incredible members of well led teams. We started this work in the millennial year 2000.
I could also regale you with stories of how heroic were these, our own young people, in creating clinics, schools and community centers, again in the face of impossible problems and many dangerous circumstances. We called this work The St Luke Foundation for Haiti.
If you like, take a few minutes to look at this video, and meet some of these great people.
As the years passed, I penned a few reflections every year, looking with the eyes of faith on many of the tough experiences we lived through, and have shared these with family, friends and supporters.
I am collecting most of these reflections now, and will soon publish them, so you can read our own history as a faith journey, and be inspired by the hard work of so many dedicated and amazing people, who have become treasured friends. I am grouping them by years- and soon you will be able to share some of our adventures (from 2014 to 2020).
When we started the work in such difficult circumstances, I asked for the intercession and blessing of St Luke, physician and Gospel whisperer. We made him our patron, and took on his name.
We wanted to ground or work with the sick in the healing ministry of Jesus, and we wanted our work in schools to be as much about values and dignity as about math and music. Like the four great Evangelists, we wanted everything to point, above all, to our great God in the highest heavens.
Because of the urgency of the tasks we faced, which were often critical, we took as our call to action these paraphrased words of an ancient Jewish philosopher, Hillel the Elder:
“If it is not me to act, who is it? And if it is not now, when?”
Though these words span 21 centuries, and are still very much alive in our hearts.
Now 20 years have passed. We are in our 20th anniversary.
I think we have been put through every conceivable test over these years. So many challenges and heart aches, joys and deep bonds of friendship.
We have faced some of the most forceful kinds of natural disasters, and unbelievable political and social upheavals, while always in the background was grinding poverty, and the crime and chaos it produces. We have faced the scourges of illness: HIV/Aids, TB, malaria, malnutrition, the scourge of cholera, and recently a pandemic that we face together with the whole human family.
While Haiti was largely spared of Covid -19, St Luke Hospital was significantly challenged by it, with 1400 some patients coming to us for help.
I would have never thought, after all we have been through, that our 20th year would be threatened by the serious weakening of the US dollar in Haiti, and by the decreased fundraising results for us and many others, as challenges mount in countries that once were secure and prosperous and now face economic uncertainties on many fronts, not the least of which is Coronavirus.
As we bring the last quarter of this infamous year to a close, I hope you will consider helping to strengthen us for our next 20 years. (I fully intend to still be working and hopefully helpful at 87!).
We know it is not a great time to ask for financial help. Around the world, there is so much uncertainty and confusion, so much financial hardship loss of employment.
Given this fact, it is truly amazing, and I thank many of your most sincerely, for the support that came in just from my alerting you to the situation in Haiti two weeks ago.
We have already recuperated the damage done to our financial stability in September! And we have also recuperated our optimism!
But we do have an idea for a direct appeal to strengthen us more, as our anniversary year comes to an end.
We hope to combine the generosity of Giving Tuesday with an increase in virtual Christmas or Holiday Parties, whereby friends get together to celebrate, and raise some funds for us. Maybe you can help us by letting your friends and families know about our work, and ask them to remember us in one of these two ways. If you think you can help with this venture, click here or visit https://www.mightycause.com/story/8zr6cg.
Our 2019 annual report might be useful to present our work, which can be found here: Annual Report
People who are in a position to be able to help can choose to focus on our hospital and clinics (which help 60,000 people every year), or on our 34 schools (which are forming 16,000 students daily).
We are still determined and dedicated, we would rather be doing more than less, funding permitting. We certainly don't want to lose the valuable ground we have gained in three decades and then some. We are ready for another decade! Please consider helping us to begin again. If you are not too tired, hear me to you directly.
Thanks to those who recent donations have righted us. Thanks for your support in this trying anniversary year!
Let’s watch together for a new light from heaven to guide us, and follow it in faith.
Be assured of our deepest gratitude and promise of prayer.
Fr Richard Frechette CP DO
October 14, 2020
Port-au-Prince
