who's who?

who's who at Leve House??

We now have four, well make that four and a half, people living at the Leve Project house in Cayes Jacmel.

Francois Jean-Louis has been working with Leve Project since October, though he has been a trusted friend for much longer! He is our right-hand man on the ground in Haiti. He moved into the Leve House in May and started with some basic clean-up of the house and yard. Francois is our Haitian manager of Leve Project and does everything from run errands and yard work to helping with budgeting and planning.

The "half" that now lives with us is his 3 year old daughter, Paskalitha. She lived with her mother in Port au Prince, however after the flooding, their living conditions were not good. Shortly after the flooding problems, her mother was admitted to the hospital and couldn't care for Paskalitha, so Francois brought her here to stay with us.

Megan Haug is a co-founder and director of Leve Project. She previously lived in Haiti, working with different ministries, and moved back to serve as the on-site manager for Leve Project on June 1st. Her main focus right now is establishing a budget, financial reports, meeting people and establishing relationships in the community, communicating with & updating the Board of Directors in the states, as well as other administrative duties.

Nicole Joseph and Yonel SeraPhin joined us at Leve house on June 11th.

Nicole is currently pretty much everything house care related. She cooks us a meal of rice and beans everyday. Does laundry once or twice a week. Keeps the dishes and house clean. Goes to the haitian market to pick up supplies. Once things pick up at Leve house, we'll need to hire someone to help take on some of these tasks, but for now Nicole handles it all with ease!

Yonel is security and helps in the yard. He also runs some errands for us. He makes sure we have drinking water everyday. Get us phone cards when we need them. He is responsible for watching the gate and letting people in. He locks the house up at night. Yonel also helps keep the yard picked up and waters our plants when we don't have rain.

Tavek

Some pictures of the near-by village Tavek. The community of Tavek will be the main village Leve Project will be working with.

The House

Here are some pictures that Megan took of the house since she arrived last week.  As you can see, before we open it up as a Life Center to the people of Cayes Jacmel, some work needs to be done!

Here's the kitchen.

Most of the common areas are tiled, except this room, the hallway, and bedrooms.

This is the little house in the backyard.

This is the ceiling.

A shower.  It's not leveled so no water actually flows through the drain.

We need your help to get our house to a place where we can begin helping others!  We're excited to see what God is going to do after blessing us with this house!

Leve Project has officially made it to Haiti. Megan Haug arrived on June 2nd to our house in Cayes Jacmel. But our house is empty!! Before we can open up our home as a Life Center or start a loan program, we need your help! We have a needs list of items you can donate, and as people travel on mission trips here, they will bring donated items in their luggage. However, there are many things that we need to purchase here in Haiti. The following is a list of needs of those items. You can choose to give a monetary donation that will go to a specific item, or give a general donation and we will use it where needed most. 

4-6 beds       $100 each

small stove $325

refrigerator $700

kitchen table & chairs $250

desk & chair $75

wood for shelves $75

cooking pots $45

dirt & rocks to level yard $80

small generator $300

couch & other seating ???

This list is just the beginning. Look around your house. Everything you see, we don’t have and probably need it! Thank you for being a part of God’s work in Haiti and partnering with Leve Project!! 

friday in Jacmel

Eric, Francois and I (megan) left downtown PAP this morning on a van heading for Jacmel. Traffic was horrible, it took us over a good hour just to get out of PAP traffic. Once we did though, it was a smooth easy drive. When our van came to it's final stop, we hopped on three motto taxis in search of the Isaiah 61 guesthouse. It's a very nice (and fairly new) guesthouse run by Community Coalition for Haiti. After settling in and eating lunch... we were ready to house hunt!! We had three houses on our list, all of them in Cayes Jacmel, just a little east of here. The first two are houses that Francois found when he came here in December. Then when the director of Isaiah 61 heard that we were house hunting, she hooked us up with another connection for a house available to rent.  However, after much waiting and many phone calls back and forth... we were told that there was a demonstration going on in the streets, blocking the route to Cayes Jacmel. Apparently, the news of Aristide coming back to Haiti in March was announced today, so his supporters were celebrating/demonstrating in the streets. Though we were disappointed we didn't make it to Cayes Jacmel, we got to look at a house for rent here in Jacmel. It was in the process of being remodeled, and though it looks like a nice house... the asking price was way too high. We didn't bother trying to negotiate yet, although it was nice, there was nothing super impressive about it. It just didn't strike us. I think we're holding out and hoping that the house Francois has told us about will work out!! Our plan is to go check out the houses in Cayes Jacmel tomorrow, si dye vle (God willing).

Thursday

Today Eric, Francois and I (megan) met with Carine, director of Fonkoze. It was a great meeting! We were able to get some answers, fill in some blanks and share our vision of our partnership. We really seem to be on the same page as far as what we want to see happen. Leve Project will be a Ti Kredi center. Our center will have 50 (they will be put into small groups of 5) women enrolled that will all go through the cycle of the program together. Usually, a Ti Kredi program consists of several "centers", adding up to 200 women. We'll be starting with the one center, piggy backing with a larger Ti Kredi program in the area. This is a great opportunity to kick-off our partnership with Fonkoze!!

Once our center is fully funded, we will be able to start enrollment. The cost of the program is $140 per women, making the total cost for our initial center $7,000. Be on the look-out, we'll be sharing more about Family Sponsorships and how you can be a part of empowering Haitian families!

we're in Haiti!

Just a quick update from Haiti:

Eric and Megan met up with Francois at the airport... and of course spent time waiting around the airport, cause that's just the way things go. We're staying at the Methodist Guest House in Petionville. Lots of other people here and while it's not quite as fun to be in a crowded room and not be able to spread out... it's always nice to meet other people and make new connections.

Eric was able to meet Sebastian's (his son from Three Angels) dad for the first time. Sebastian's mother died in the earthquake, so it was especially special to be able to make contact with his dad. Eric was able to show him pictures and tell him how Sebastian is doing.

We are meeting with Carine, the director of Fonkoze first thing tomorrow morning. We made a list of questions and made sure we were ready for that meeting! We are excited to finally meet Carine and discuss what our partnership will look like.  After our meeting, I'm sure we'll have lots of planning to do! We also hope to swing by Three Angels and say hi to some friends other there.

Friday morning, we'll head to Jacmel. This is the part we're really looking forward to!! We're looking forward to seeing a new place, meeting new people, staying at a new guest house.... and FINDING A HOUSE TO RENT!!   We'll stay in Jacmel Friday and Saturday night and head back to PAP on Sunday. There are a few other things we'd like to do-- price check a few items, meet some new contacts, etc. After our meeting with Fonkoze and trip to Jacmel, we'll have a lot to discuss and decisions to make!