Gratitude

I sometimes feel like a broken record. As I sit to write a weekly update from Be Like Brit in Haiti, I so often talk about the overwhelming support of friends that we have here - how none of this would be possible without the generosity of others. That remains true, and that truth is reinforced on a daily basis here in Haiti. We have so much to be grateful and thankful for.

This past week, as our friends in the USA celebrated the Thanksgiving Holiday, Haitians by and large, I think, breathed a collective sigh of relief, as the November 20, 2016 Presidential Elections came and went without much fanfare in terms of violence or fallout. Elections which have been delayed on more than one occasion, results contested, with threats of and actual violence have happened. We're patiently waiting for official results which should come any day now.

Many of you may recall in the days following Hurricane Matthew that here at BLB, we set up outside of our gate and allowed people to come to us to sign up for assistance in the damages or losses that they may have received as a result of the storm. In just one morning, we received requests for assistance from more than 100 households. Of course, not unlike anywhere else where poverty and circumstances push otherwise good and honest people to do dishonest things, we did find some instances where people were not reporting accurately the damages they suffered. In many cases, people would prefer to have a cash payout vs. a repair to a home, or the replacement of contents. 

In order to best address these discrepancies, we sent our Britsionary Team Leaders Francky and Madona out to visit each and every home that was signed up on that list. This is no easy task, as those of you who have been here know, the area around Brit's Home in Haiti is mountainous, and the sun, unforgiving. Francky and Madona exuded a tremendous amount of work in conducting these visits and assessments, and we are grateful for their commitment. BLB now has a long list of repairs - confirmed need, in an effort to ensure that the relief dollars so many of you donated are spent in the most appropriate way possible. 

The photos above are just two examples of the all-too-common reality of our neighbors and friends. This is why we are so grateful to all of you who donated to our Hurricane Relief efforts. The homes that we are able to repair and replace, as necessary, will protect against the loss of property and protect lives ahead of the next challenge to our resolve...

We were so proud this past week when our children brought home their report cards!!! Another subtle reminder of why we are thankful. The gifts of sponsorship allow us to send our children to the best two schools in the region with Mission of Hope International and St. Francois. Together with our home schooling program for five of our boys, we truly believe we are raising the next generation of leaders in Haiti. 

Between all of the wonderful things happening here in Haiti and the awesome work that our Team in the USA, along with our selfless volunteers, we know how fortunate and blessed we are. No matter what the cause, no matter what the need, it seems that there is no end to the blessings we find ourselves on the receiving end of. 

Just last week, we shipped our container out of the Port in Boston to make its way to Haiti with more than 16,000 pounds of supplies on board. Dozens of volunteers showed up at the Operations Center with just one request that we posted on our Facebook page, asking for some hands to help us with some important items we had in our USA office. We hope that you all are confident that in those blessings 

and in this abundance - in this time of thanks - we are both humbled and honored in the faith you put in us each and every day with all of your efforts, your time, and your support!

We have big news coming your way soon out of South Florida, but we will make you wait for that! Be sure to stay tuned to our social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) for more information!!!

Thank you for helping us raise the children of Haiti at Be Like Brit!!!

A Be Like Brit Star.

For those of you who have followed us over the years, you know how fortunate we are to be surrounded by so many incredible individuals who have offered their time, their talents, and their resources to help us help the children at Be Like Brit. Last weekend, we recognized one of our most dedicated and generous ambassadors for Be Like Brit, in the awarding of the Star Award to the Reverend Dr. Debra Pallatto-Fontaine. Debbie is a powerhouse in so many ways. We've benefited from her expertise from our earliest days, as Debbie served as a member of our Program Committee back during the construction phase of our work, and now serves in a much more expansive role.

After receiving the Star Award at our Gala last Saturday, Debbie flew back to Haiti with me on Monday of last week to deliver her quarterly professional development staff and teacher trainings to all of our caregivers. Debbie provides this professional level workshops at least 4 times per year, and the benefits of having her perspective and insights in areas of faith, child development, psychology, curriculum development, and early childhood education are invaluable to us. Our staff has grown by leaps and bounds, and they absolutely love it when Madame Debbie visits!

As a Reverend with the United Church of Christ, we look to Debbie (along with our own Father Madden) for guidance when conflict arrives as a result of faith - or, more specifically, differences of faith. While the Be Like Brit Foundation is not specifically a faith-based organization, the Gengels are Catholic, and faith was a huge part of Brit's life, as it is for the family still. As some of our children are from a Catholic background and others a Christian (Protestant) background, we're noticing as they get older that sometimes the perceived or actual differences between the two faiths can cause problems and conflict to arise between not only our children, but our children and our visitors, too.

Debbie was supposed to have traveled to BLB the first week of October, until Hurricane Matthew hit, forcing us to reschedule her trip. When we figured out that we could get Debbie here when I flew back from the Gala, we took the opportunity of asking Debbie to incorporate some kind of service in to her week, where she could talk to the children and to the staff about what it means to be an ecumenical organization here, but more importantly, how we're all created in God's image and every human being is deserving of mutual respect and civility. The values of tolerance and diversity are very important to the Be Like Brit Foundation, and we hope that we can raise our children to hold these same beliefs. Debbie's service, sharing in the body and the blood of Christ together, regardless of formal faith or ideology, was a great lesson for our children. Like she always does, Debbie found a way to work the children in to the service, with a choir, faith dancers, and helpers up on the altar, too!

We are thrilled that at last week's Gala, we were able to announce officially that, through the Yunus Centre for Social Business at Becker College, Debbie has launched what is called the "DREAMS Program: Educating the Future of Haiti This is a 6 module, 15 week hybrid course, focusing on topics around social and emotional intelligence, child development, and intensive English language instruction. We've started out with our first cohort of 11 Be Like Brit employees, who, upon completion of the course, will receive official course completion certificate from Becker College! The group is loving the program so far, and we are excited to see how it may develop and grow over time! What do you think about their Becker gear?!

It is these kinds of initiatives and partnerships that truly do allow us to bring a whole new level of care and professionalism to our children, our program, and of course the organization. We want people to know that when we say we're working to raise the next generation of leaders in Haiti, we mean it, and these types of programs are what set us apart from the rest! We're proud of our work, and especially grateful to Madame Debbie - our Star!!!

It was a joy to have spent the last few days working with Debbie, and talking about other ways that we can deepen this relationship! We have an exciting trip for Becker in early 2017, where we will be meeting with the Country Director of the Yunus Social Business in Haiti and visiting some of their projects in the country. We look forward to a long relationship with Debbie and with Becker! 

Thank you for helping us help the children of Haiti at Be Like Brit!!!

The Be Like Brit 6th Annual Fall Gala!

Last night, Saturday, November 12, 2016, we at BLB held our 6th Annual Fall Gala FUNdraiser! This is actually the night that I look forward to the most each year, as it truly is a chance for everyone at Be Like Brit to come together with our friends, supporters, Britsionarys, and Ambassadors to not only offer a look at the events of the current year, but to discuss and share some of our plans moving forward, too. It's our biggest event of the year, and last night, some 340 (or so) of you came to the event at the DCU Center in Worcester, MA. What a fabulous night!!!

We are always so grateful and overwhelmed at the love and support we receive at Be Like Brit. This year, we were tested in many ways, and the Worcester Community and beyond never let us down. More than 16,000 pounds of Hurricane Relief donations came streaming in to our Operations Center in just two days - and more than $60,000 USD was raised - in the first two days! Donations both in-kind and monetary continue to roll in for our relief efforts, and we are busy planning out the best way to utilize these funds to respond to this most recent tragedy and plan ahead for the next. It's people like you who make it possible.

While Madame Love and I traveled up from Haiti, we were honored that Len brought our newest addition, Deb Kaiser Cross up from Florida, too! As we grow in to an international nonprofit, we are strategically planning for our future, too. Deb will be leading groups in to Haiti from Florida, as she works with Len to share the news of Be Like Brit and we plan to set up an office at some point in 2017 in Delray Beach! We're thrilled to have her on board and it was wonderful to be able to introduce her to our friends last night!

Deb isn't the only one who made the trip to Worcester for our big night! We are so blessed, and have friends who traveled to be with us last night from Long Island, Connecticut, Maine, New York, New Hampshire, and more! Our own Susan Wornick of course came in from FL, and we were honored to have Congressman Jim McGovern and his wife Lisa in attendance, as well! As many of you know, Jim was instrumental in getting Len in to Haiti just after the quake back in 2010, and both he and Lisa have been to Be Like Brit and have been staunch supporters of our cause. What a wonderful night!

Our evening was a huge success, and we can't thank you all enough for the generosity of not only your attendance, but to all of those local businesses and individuals who work so hard to get auction items and donations together for the night. With well over 100 items to bid on, we are so happy that nearly every item we had went home with someone last night! We're so grateful to so many of you that I know if I tried to list them all here, I would miss some! It is this amazing collective effort that makes this night such a success.

With dozens of volunteers helping us with the event last night, we have to acknowledge the great people of St. John's in Shrewsbury, who have from our earliest days of operating Brit's Home in Haiti been such incredible supporters. The fine young men of St. John's filled so many roles for us last night, and under the direction of Mr. Tim Williams, Mr. Mike Nicholson, and Mr. Mike Foley, we are truly blessed to have them on our side. 

With more than 100 Britsionarys who have traveled to Haiti, countless sponsors, and more - I could go on and on. Your generosity and dedication to Continuing the Compassion is overwhelming, and I know I can speak on behalf of Len and Cherylann Gengel when I say that we are truly humbled by your selflessness, and are so appreciative that each of you have come in to our BLB lives! While it is a night for fundraising and a night for some business, most of all, it is a night of fun - of celebration - to take the time to appreciate and recognize the fabulous family that we all have with Be Like Brit.

People, indeed, are so very good. Thank you for helping us help the children of Haiti at Be Like Brit.

Evolving Over Time

This past week, we welcomed Cherylann, Father John Madden, our good friend and rock star Britsionary and Operations Center volunteer Lauren, along with our friend Rae Ann and her son Max to Haiti for one of our post-Hurricane Matthew-specific build-a-home trips. The group while small in numbers had a huge impact on an area of Grand Goâve hit especially hard by Matthew - the area near the coast, at Taino Beach.

The community that lives on the only road that heads down to Taino is especially vulnerable, as they are either just barely located above sea level. Again, while we in Grand Goâve were spared the most destructive forces that Hurricane Matthew brought to Haiti, there was no shortage of flooding along the coast and the lower-lying areas, and the family in need this past week was no exception. The rains entered their dirt-floor home, and the standing water turned the floor to mud, rendering the home inhabitable. When our friend Father Brice from the St. François Parish approached Be Like Brit, we knew we had to help! Even more fitting, St. François is the Sister Parish to St. John's of Worcester, and so having our friend and Board Member Father Madden along for this trip was especially serendipitous. What better way for the two forces to come together than through a build-a-home trip in Haiti just weeks after a major disaster?

It was wonderful to see how this group took charge and in just two full work days was able to construct a safe, hurricane reinforced home with a concrete pad as a floor, walls securely anchored in cement, and roof strapped to resist the next threatening winds and rains that will inevitably, again, come. Our commitment to Haiti and to providing jobs for our community is clear, and this week we were able to employ an additional 15 laborers for this and other construction projects we have ongoing. The evolution of our Britsionary program and the changes we've implemented from our first days operating after our own construction was completed are nothing short of amazing. What started out as a "fix a home" program has evolved, and we're not just building in our community, but we're developing our community, too - both in neighborhoods and in economy.

You may have noticed recently that when possible, we are sending some of our older children (boys and girls!) to work alongside our Britsionarys. As our children grow, and as we work with them more closely in terms of setting short-term goals and even in some cases life goals, we are learning so much about them, as they are about themselves! Fredo came to us recently and asked us if he could start to work alongside some of our carpenters, as he felt like that was something he was interested in learning. As Fredo is one of our 5 boys at the Be Like Brit Academy, we thought it was perfect to work in some professional/vocational training to his standard academics. A very generous friend learned this, and got Fredo a proper tool-belt, hammer, work gloves, and steel-toed boots! He worked right alongside the group over these two days, and his sense of pride and accomplishment is clear! He event took on the skill saw, under the close guidance and instruction of our job foreman, Nico!

I love that Nico started out with us as a laborer, became a caregiver who went through dozens of child-development trainings over the course of two years, and now is working as a foreman on our job sites. Who better than to work alongside our children as they age in to these areas of interest. This is just another way how at Be Like Brit, we're working to raise the standard of child care in the developing world. Not many programs can make the claim that their carpenters have gone through years of professional development training! We are so proud of the work we're doing here, and it's only possible because of the generosity of incredible individuals from all over the world!!!

The final house blessing was a beautiful event, with Fathers Madden and Brice on-hand to give the home the appropriate Catholic rite. So much good can come from  people intent on making a difference, and this week was no exception. We are blessed to know such incredible people and to call them friends.

It occurred to me as I flew back to Haiti last week from a vacation in Santo Domingo that in just over a month, I'll mark four full years with Be Like Brit! Wow! With Cherylann here, we laughed until we cried at some of the earliest days, at some of our more challenging moments, and at how naive I once was - not understanding Haiti, not understanding the history and the nuances of culture and every day life here. It is fair to say that we've all grown in ways that we never imagined we would - and that all of the difficulties and hardships - whatever struggles they may have brought us - have all been life lessons from which we've learned, adjusted, adapted, and persevered. Much like our Haitian friends and family, with Hope, Faith, and Love, we evolve.

Just yesterday, Meghan lead a group of Britsionarys down to undertake another task - another home, in just two days! Together with Lauren (who stayed on from the previous trip, and who we're not sure we're going to be able to get rid of!), Nikki, Maggie, Alicia, and our own Madame Amanda, we know it's going to be another opportunity for us to pay it forward. Stay tuned for updates!

As always, thank you for helping us help the children - and the people - of Haiti through Be Like Brit!!!