Boca Grande Hope For Haitians Marks 15 Years Building Houses
COCONUT CREEK – For 15 years, Boca Grande Hope For Haitians has provided hope and homes in Haiti through Food For The Poor. The Scott family’s campaign continues this year for 25 families in Terre Cassée.
The goal is to raise funds to build 25 two-bedroom homes with water and sanitation, and solar-powered light kits in Terre Cassée, where families live in shacks made of wood planks, rusted metal sheets, straw and mud.
The local school for the children of Terre Cassee will be expanded with six new high school classrooms and provide space for community gatherings.
Longtime Boca Grande Hope For Haitians Committee Chairpersons Ben and Louise Scott, natives of Piqua, Ohio, and winter residents of Boca Grande.
Since 2009, Boca Grande Hope For Haitians has built 640 homes, eight community centers, two schools and two dormitories, and a clinic on the island nation through FFTP. Thousands of fruit trees have been planted, goats and farm equipment have been provided, and a fishing village was outfitted with several boats and a fish house with a solar-powered freezer.
“This has been a project of great magnitude that the Boca Grande Hope For Haitians Committee never thought would be possible,” Ben Scott said.
More recently, Boca Grande Hope For Haitians raised money over the last three years to build 83 homes and a community in Périgny, Haiti, near the epicenter of the August 2021 earthquake that struck Haiti’s southern peninsula.
“Our goal was to build 80 homes and a community center, but because of our donors’ generosity, we were able to fund 83 homes and the community center, bringing these families out of deplorable conditions and into a home with a roof that will keep them dry and a door that will keep them secure,” Ben Scott said.
All the homes will be completed by the first quarter of this year.
“It’s a 400-square-foot house and it’s a castle to them,” Ben Scott added. “It changes their life forever and it gives them hope.”
Now, the Scotts are turning their attention to the community of Terre Cassée located in the commune of Hinche, in a region north of Port-au-Prince less affected by the violence and challenges to the south. “This will allow us to have fewer challenges in constructing the new buildings,” FFTP Haiti Project Manager Susan James-Casserly said.
When it rains in Terre Cassée, water pours through cracks and openings in the roofs and walls of the residents’ shacks. Small children are especially vulnerable to the harsh weather conditions. Gislene, a Terre Cassée resident, said the materials that would help families keep rainwater from pouring through their roofs are not available. She prays to God to intervene for relief from the misery that besets most families in Terre Cassée.
“All our belongings get wet over and over,” Gislene said. “There is almost no difference between being inside the house and being outside sometimes. As we do not have any other place to take refuge, we must stay there until the situation changes.”
The current school provides education to 586 students from kindergarten to ninth grade. Six additional classrooms would allow students to go to high school in their community. Two organizations in the area – Organizasyon Fanm Vanyan Tè Kase (Brave Women of Terre Cassée Organization), created in 2009 by single community mothers to promote empowerment, and Petits Frères de l’Incarnation, a religious congregation – are collaborating with FFTP to help with the project.
Boca Grande Hope for Haitians Committee members include Chairpersons Ben and Louise Scott, the Rev. Gary Beatty, the Rev. Jerome Carosella, the Rev. Michelle Robertshaw, Henry and Ginny Bryant, George and Lois Castrucci, John Denneen, Lou and Corie Fusz, Jim and Lynda Grant, Stephen and Susan Jansen, Tom and Nancy Lorden, and Janice and Wayne Hursen, and Patricia Chapman, honorary committee member.
Food For The Poor, one of the largest international relief and development organizations in the nation, does much more than feed millions of hungry children and families living in poverty primarily in 17 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, water, medicine, educational materials, homes, support for vulnerable children, care for the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance. For more information, please visit foodforthepoor.org.
