Embracing Facts, Igniting Change!

Each May we take this time to share information about our programs, inviting you to partner with us in our sacred work with Haitian families. This year the need is greater than ever.

The beginning of March ushered in an unprecedented level of violence in Haiti. Gangs terrorized innocent citizens, and destroyed homes, businesses, and healthcare facilities. Ports and airports are closed, 4000 violent criminals were released in two coordinated prison breaks, and 3000 women have gone without pregnancy care. 1500 citizens have been murdered in the past three months alone, and kidnappings are up 32% over this time last year. 

Sexual assault has been weaponized, with children as young as ten years old raped on camera. The human rights abuses are unprecedented, even in a country where violence has become increasingly common. This is now our reality in Haiti. 

There are now 350,000 internally displaced people in Haiti, with 170,000 of them being children. Many of these souls have migrated to the Central Plateau, where Midwives for Haiti has worked for almost 20 years. We welcome them to our place of relative safety, compared to Port Au Prince, but our resources are severely strained. Prices for medications, medical supplies and food have tripled, and our budget cannot stretch to fill these new, but vital needs.

Midwives for Haiti has stockpiled food and medications, but these will run out by the end of May. As of now, there is no end in sight to the troubles.Midwifery is a sacred calling. To work with mothers and babies is to touch the Divine every day, to give each baby the most loving start, knowing that chances are their lives will not reflect this. It is a chance to bring kindness and gentleness to mothers whose lives are filled with hardship. The women and men who do this work are special; they have the ability to find joy in the struggle itself, to see the beauty in the pain of labor, and hope in the adversity of a nation. They are everything.

Our job at MFH is to support the process, whether it is a woman’s birthing or a nation’s survival. Our midwives and staff bring their entire selves to this work, their hands, heads, and hearts. They stand in the gap between life and death, squaring their shoulders, steadying their breath, and looking adversity straight in the eye. They are love personified, in all its messy, complicated glory, and they need your help.

This campaign we invite you to learn some of the stories from our programs which inspire us daily. Some of them are not easy to hear. There is precious little to celebrate in Haiti right now, and yet we do. We rejoice with the mothers and babies who survive pregnancy and childbirth, and the midwives audacious enough to take on this challenge. And we thank YOU for everything you have done for our Haitian family over the years and will continue to do.  

We are up to this challenge. We know you are too.

Love Always,

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