RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Baptist mission leaders are developing projects in earthquake-devastated Haiti which they hope will lead to long-term relationships on the island and to self-sustaining operations.
That was the assessment of Dean Miller, Virginia missions coordinator for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, following an April 21-24 meeting in Port-au-Prince with Haitian Baptists and other international Baptist organizations.
“We want to work with the community so we can have a long-term, sustainable relationship,” said Miller.
Haitians gather in the streets of Port-au-Prince following the 7.0 magnitude earthquake. (BP PHOTO/CBS NEWS SCREEN CAPTURE)
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Since the Jan. 12 earthquake which killed as many as 200,000 Haitians, Virginia Baptists have contributed over $400,000 for relief efforts. Miller said about $30,000 of that amount has been spent on food and another $10,000 on medical supplies.
But the remainder will be used strategically to have the widest and longest-lasting impact, said Miller, who discussed possible projects at the April 21-24 meeting. Also attending were representatives of the Haiti Baptist Convention and Baptist Haiti Mission, two of the three Baptist conventions in the country; the Baptist World Alliance; the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship; and Hungarian Baptist Aid, a Budapest-based aid agency with close ties to the Baptist World Alliance.
Virginia Baptist will probably focus their efforts in Delmas, a suburb east of Port-au-Prince, said Miller. Projects will include rebuilding a Baptist church and school there that were destroyed in the quake, and helping Haitian Baptists to open an orphanage in the suburb — a desperate need in the wake of the deaths of many parents.
In addition, said Miller, leaders are interested in developing a job training center, microfinancing opportunities and other ways that will connect to the Delmas community.
“Virginia Baptists will be more likely to be involved if the project is bigger than this one church,” said Miller. “We want to work on that goal and also work in the community so we can have long-term, sustainable relationship. We want all this, including the orphanage, to become self-sustaining.”
The proposed projects will be facilitated by the presence of several Cooperative Baptist Fellowship mission workers based in Haiti. These include Nancy and Steve James, who were appointed both by the CBF and American Baptist Churches USA and have served in Haiti for years. They are joined in medical ministry by Tori Wentz, one of the CBF’s medical field personnel based in Virginia.
Rotating as the Fellowship’s on-site relief coordinator in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, are Scott Hunter, former CBF field personnel who is on temporary assignment, and Tim Brendle, who began serving April 9. A former missionary to Haiti, Brendle lives in Petersburg, Va., and is a retired pastor of Ridge Baptist Church in Richmond.
The CBF’s long-term relief plans include:
• Identifying, training and empowering a team of Haitians to strategize and lead long-term recovery efforts.
• Meeting needs for food and temporary shelter.
• Rebuilding orphanages.
• Developing low-cost ways to harvest and treat water, making it safe to drink and use in agriculture.
• Micro-enterprise efforts including savings and credit associations, vocational training for women and business development.
• Assistance for coping with post-traumatic stress, including art therapy for children.
• Building earthquake-resistant housing through partners such as Conscience International and the Fuller Center for Housing, which can construct a single family home for $3,000.
• Medical recovery initiatives such as making available low-cost prosthetics to Haitians who lost limbs in the earthquake. The Fellowship has allocated $50,000 in response funds for Mercer University’s Ha Van Vo, a biomedical engineering professor, to fit Haitian amputees with the prosthetics he invented.