Christa's Angels
Friends & Family
Matching Campaign
Dear Friends and Family,
It’s been 15 years since the Haiti earthquake. Even after so much time has passed, the support you all gave during the earthquake’s aftermath continues to shape my sense of self. My most abiding memory of my ‘recovery period’ is the outpouring of help and support I received from you. It felt to me like everyone I’d ever known was looking out for us in their own particular way. One person used a calendar reminder to check in with me every Tuesday for months because the earthquake was on Tuesday. You sent money, sent gifts, gave legal advice, organized communities, created a non-profit, fed me, housed my family, picked up medication, delivered my mom to the airport, got ADA doors installed in my classrooms, rallied the climbing community in four states, and gave me the support I needed to figure out a new way of living. I get January 12th text messages from you every year and still count on them.
In that era, I promised myself I would be equally steadfast in my support for the Haitians who don’t have a wide network of Americans to care for them. I’ve tried, imperfectly, to live up to that promise. Initially through Christa’s Angels, and in a more sustainable fashion with Haiti Partners, you sparked enough donations to rebuild the school Julian and I had been helping out and then some. It’s meant a lot to me to know that my community cares -not just for me- but for people around the world who need help.
I’ve now served on the Haiti Partners Board for six years. Even through the ongoing and increasing security challenges in Haiti, Haiti Partners meets the absolute highest standards I can imagine in ethical and appropriate development work through community and child centered education. I’ve served as treasurer and financial chair for years, and so I read the account books every month. Haiti Partners is a careful, ethical, and effective steward of donor money.
The kids in the Haiti Partners Children’s Academy are receiving a quality education that very few of their peers have access to. The primary reason the school is still open and
still providing quality education in spite of it all is because of the deep network of trust that Haiti Partners staff in both the US and Haiti have built with their community. It’s an incredibly significant achievement that every single one of the first cohort of kids at the Children’s Academy passed the national high school entrance exam, which has a typical pass rate of 60% or so.
People sometimes worry about the ongoing instability in Haiti making current investments worthless. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Every day that the Children’s Academy provides a model of what education can be is another day in the lifetime education of Haiti’s future leaders. Buildings fall down. Institutions can fail. Material things will eventually fall apart. Education lasts a lifetime. Education is an investment in the future: it appreciates with time rather than depreciating.
In the post-earthquake era, many of you told me to ask if I ever needed help. It’s 15 years later, and Haiti Partners is still here and still doing some of the most fundamental development work that can be done. However, Haiti Partners needs our help. The organization's financial status rises and falls with sentiment in the United States, which is entirely unrelated to the quality of their programming. So for the first time in 15 years, I'm asking my family and a few friends-become-family for help.
Financial turmoil in the US, big foundations stepping away from Haiti because of the ongoing instability there, and the apparent end of USAID have made fundraising extraordinarily difficult. Haiti Partners faces a budget shortfall this year of around $200k. Can we, collectively, work to fill some of this shortfall? Ethan and I will match the first $5,000 raised, and another anonymous donor will match up to $10,000 beyond that, so that if our friends and family are able to raise $15,000 we will fill in a good part of the gap. Please join us in keeping this dream of a child centered education for Haitian kids alive.
With love in a time of uncertainty,
Christa
What your MATCHED DONATION can do:
$40 x 2 = 2 months scholarship for a student
$100 x 2 = 4 months garden assistance for parents
$250 x 2 = 2 months support for a teacher
$480 x 2 = 2 full years scholarship for a student
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Your voice can
be the difference
Helping student and families in Haiti requires a broad community of support. We invite you to create a Facebook fundraiser for Haiti Partners. It takes just a few minutes and your endorsement is a powerful way to bring new people to the cause. The average fundraiser on Facebook raises $150, which is enough to send a child to a Haiti Partners school for nearly 4 months.
Thank you to our generous supporters!
5000+
Christa Brelsford & Ethan Coon
$1000+
James Brelsford, Alan Brelsford & Jessica Purcell
$500+
Taylor Brelsford, Eric Schallert
$100+
James & Janet McLaughlin, Linda & Daniel Coon, Ginna Brelsford, Virginia Brelsford, Alex Bowen