Happy New Year to all of our dedicated friends and followers! This week, as we will recognize the 7th Anniversary of the earthquake, we thought we would share with you all our plans and our vision for the coming year! Since our Dedication in January of 2013, we've grown and changed in ways we never could have imagined. Just look at one of our first staff meetings we ever held! My, how we've grown!!!
We are very excited to be hosting our first Britsionary Group of 2017, a group from the College of the Holy Cross, along with our medical Team Dr. Vicki Kvedar, her daughter Julie, and Dr. Olga Smulders Meyer. Vicki and Julie have been coming to Be Like Brit each January since we opened, conducting eye exams and fitting our children, staff, and others from the community with eyeglasses! What a gift to be able to restore someone's sight! Olga's specialty as an OB-GYN is especially valuable for the women on our staff, and surrounding community, as it is especially difficult to find qualified physicians in our area of Haiti in areas of women's health. We are so grateful for their bringing this quality of care to Be Like Brit, and even more grateful we're able to share this with our community!!! Our Britsionarys will be building a home this week, too!
We have many new exciting Goals on the horizon for 2017 in Worcester, Delray Beach, and here in Haiti! One of the more exciting programs we're implementing here in Haiti is the creation of a small store/boutique (we're still taking suggestions for names) in which our children can participate in buying/selling of items donated, using points or Haitian Gourdes earned through our "Catch You Being Good" Program, a positive reinforcement program designed to recognize and reward children for going above and beyond what is expected of them. Thanks to our good friend Dr. Debra Pallatto-Fontaine, we have clear criteria and guidelines on how to implement this program, and we're already seeing the children motivated to do better!
One of our overnight caregivers, Madame Mirtha, will be running the store, as she is also a market keeper at the open market in Grand Goave. She'll be teaching our children how to engage in commerce locally in her own market as well as here at Brit's Boutique!!! She's very excited, and we think this truly creates a win-win-win situation for all of those involved!
We are always looking at ways in which we can be more sustainable, and one of those ways might just be through the introduction of a farm! We are hoping to develop relationships here in Haiti through contacts and friends in the United States that will allow us to create a program including the development of a livestock and agricultural program that will not only be a training ground for our children (and who knows who else) but also might be a future source of food for Brit's Home and for the feeding program we're hoping to develop in tandem with this project. We are considering ways in which we can invest and participate in the local economy more and more, and if we have livestock to raise and sell, a source of food coming from our gardens and livestock, we believe we can create jobs and contribute to the local economy more and more. Be sure to stay tuned for updates on this exciting addition, too!
With the construction of our cistern complete, we're now just working to secure funding to finish the project! We have more than an acre of gardens and trees planted around BLB and they require regular watering. In a place where water scarcity can be the norm, being able to move water from the cistern to our garden is an important piece of the puzzle. This year we will be completing this project with a full irrigation and sprinkler system installation.
Stateside, we're working to develop our Britsionary Program to include a more diverse set of options and choices for people who want to travel to Haiti but who may not be able to commit to a full week, and for those who may have other skill sets outside of our house building program who want to contribute, too! In 2016, we started to develop some alternative options, and one of our goals for 2017 is to host themed weeks, like Team Bonding Weeks for corporations, father/son, mother/daughter, etc.
We are especially excited to be hosting a Becker College group this year, who will be the first of our full-week Britsionarys who don't actually build a house, but instead come as a part of a learning component to Becker's Global Citizenship Program in cooperation with the Yunus Centre for Social Business at Becker College. We look forward to bringing an academic-focused intercultural exchange group here to our home in Haiti and share with them the rich history and culture that so often gets ignored when people think of this beautiful country.
There are many more exciting things which we'll be announcing as the year goes on, but we wanted to share with you some of our bigger goals for 2017! All of this is possible only because of the hard work, dedication, and compassion of people like you! As always, thank you for helping us Help the Children of Haiti at Be Like Brit!!!
We are very excited to be hosting our first Britsionary Group of 2017, a group from the College of the Holy Cross, along with our medical Team Dr. Vicki Kvedar, her daughter Julie, and Dr. Olga Smulders Meyer. Vicki and Julie have been coming to Be Like Brit each January since we opened, conducting eye exams and fitting our children, staff, and others from the community with eyeglasses! What a gift to be able to restore someone's sight! Olga's specialty as an OB-GYN is especially valuable for the women on our staff, and surrounding community, as it is especially difficult to find qualified physicians in our area of Haiti in areas of women's health. We are so grateful for their bringing this quality of care to Be Like Brit, and even more grateful we're able to share this with our community!!! Our Britsionarys will be building a home this week, too!
We have many new exciting Goals on the horizon for 2017 in Worcester, Delray Beach, and here in Haiti! One of the more exciting programs we're implementing here in Haiti is the creation of a small store/boutique (we're still taking suggestions for names) in which our children can participate in buying/selling of items donated, using points or Haitian Gourdes earned through our "Catch You Being Good" Program, a positive reinforcement program designed to recognize and reward children for going above and beyond what is expected of them. Thanks to our good friend Dr. Debra Pallatto-Fontaine, we have clear criteria and guidelines on how to implement this program, and we're already seeing the children motivated to do better!
One of our overnight caregivers, Madame Mirtha, will be running the store, as she is also a market keeper at the open market in Grand Goave. She'll be teaching our children how to engage in commerce locally in her own market as well as here at Brit's Boutique!!! She's very excited, and we think this truly creates a win-win-win situation for all of those involved!
We're currently working on establishing a fully-functional South Florida office, too! As we work to establish and develop this office, we will be able to do more and more for the people of Haiti!!! With the addition of Dr. Reverend Deb Kaiser Cross to our Team, we know that the Compassion of Britney Gengel and the news of our work will be brought to areas previously untouched! We are very excited for this expansion and know that great things will be coming from South Florida! Be sure to stay tuned for exciting news on the South Florida front!!! As many of you know, Brit went to school at Lynn University in Boca Raton, and loved spending time in Delray Beach! We will always honor and remember Brit in everything we do, and this is another symbolic way in which we can do that!!!
We are also busy behind the scenes working to finalize details with potential medical partners, in order to expand the scope of our reach in terms of health and wellness. We believe strongly that education is the key factor missing from the equation, and that educated people make educated decisions. So often, we see people coming to us for assistance with an issue they have been previously diagnosed with, but have a total lack of understanding as to how they may have become ill.
Cultural beliefs attribute causation, in many instances, to supernatural - good, bad, or indifferent. We have seen instances where people believe that suffering is a test from God, and that doing something to alleviate it is to shirk a responsibility placed on you. We have seen instances where people believe that they do not suffer from a medical problem, but instead, one of mystique or magic. I've personally met people with an HIV positive diagnosis who have no understanding of their disease. Areas around health, in particular preventative health, are so vitally important. We have been blessed to work with UMASS Medical, Beth Israel, and more over the years. We hope to be able to bring you great news regarding our medical initiatives soon!
With the construction of our cistern complete, we're now just working to secure funding to finish the project! We have more than an acre of gardens and trees planted around BLB and they require regular watering. In a place where water scarcity can be the norm, being able to move water from the cistern to our garden is an important piece of the puzzle. This year we will be completing this project with a full irrigation and sprinkler system installation.
Stateside, we're working to develop our Britsionary Program to include a more diverse set of options and choices for people who want to travel to Haiti but who may not be able to commit to a full week, and for those who may have other skill sets outside of our house building program who want to contribute, too! In 2016, we started to develop some alternative options, and one of our goals for 2017 is to host themed weeks, like Team Bonding Weeks for corporations, father/son, mother/daughter, etc.
We are especially excited to be hosting a Becker College group this year, who will be the first of our full-week Britsionarys who don't actually build a house, but instead come as a part of a learning component to Becker's Global Citizenship Program in cooperation with the Yunus Centre for Social Business at Becker College. We look forward to bringing an academic-focused intercultural exchange group here to our home in Haiti and share with them the rich history and culture that so often gets ignored when people think of this beautiful country.
There are many more exciting things which we'll be announcing as the year goes on, but we wanted to share with you some of our bigger goals for 2017! All of this is possible only because of the hard work, dedication, and compassion of people like you! As always, thank you for helping us Help the Children of Haiti at Be Like Brit!!!
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