Latest Update from Jean-Robert Cadet part 13
From Joan Conn, Exec. Director of the Restavek Foundation:
“We are continuing to work to find children and today our entire staff is out covering many areas. Jean Robert is with a team in Santo and Cite Soleil and Clint, Jean Marie and Marcel are working to deliver food and assess the materials needed to get Sr. Kitley’s wall rebuilt for security. Nadine and her team are in the Fontamara area delivering clothes to some of the kids without any additional clothing other than what they have on their backs. Our school directors are working closely with us to feed children and communities and we have already delivered over 1000 lbs of food this morning. We are continuing to receive calls from others needing help and the UN and World Food Program are starting to release food into the areas. It seems that they are ready to work with smaller NGO’s and realize that this may be the best way to make distributions effectively.
Our house that we rented has been turned into a food depot and we are now a little family of 13 with more coming soon. We have pulled some of the English students from Port Salut in to help and they are doing a great job. Sleep is elusive as we go to bed with the dogs barking and wake up with the rooster crowing but the Haitian coffee is the best.
We met a child yesterday that will be one of the first that we will take into the transitional safe house. She was scrubbing pots when Jean Robert arrived. After 15 minutes of scrubbing Jean Robert said to her, “don’t you think you have scrubbed that pot long enough?” She responded that she could not quit until the pot she was scrubbing looked like all the others there beside her. She was then ridiculed and told to work faster. The person that she lived with showed no shame in the way she was treating the child. Is this poverty that causes this kind of cruelty? It seems that it is more the acceptance of this practice that allows people to be so abusive of these children. This child has no rights and is subjected to great humiliation and ridicule. Her situation is one of the worst we have witnessed as she already has that look in her eyes that one comes to understand when working with these children.”
- Joan Conn
