Two North Brunswick residents who created an organization to assist the people of Haiti have just returned from their second visit.
A feeding program implemented in Jubilee Blanc in Gonaïves, Haiti, provides at least one meal of rice and beans to all schoolchildren and 200 of the area’s poorest children every day. Christine and Darren Young (not pictured) visited a three-room school in Jubilee Blanc in Gonaïves, Haiti, during a trip in August. Darren and Christine Young flew from New Jersey to Georgia to Florida to Haiti, spending Aug. 7 to 14 in the city of Gonaïves. Although their initial trip in March was focused on assisting those affected in Port-au-Prince by this year’s earthquake, since their volunteer organization For This One is focused on Haiti as a whole, the couple decided to travel to the poorest region of Haiti to help those residents.
“We’re going where there is a need and an opportunity,” Christine said.
The Youngs spent a week in Jubilee Blanc, a very poor section of Gonaïves. Since it was the children’s first week of school, classroom calendars, dry-erase lapboards, wall charts and water bottles were among the $1,200 in classroom supplies donated to the school.
Last year there were about 40 kindergartners attending the first year of the newly built building, but this year there were about 100 total firstgraders and kindergartners in the three-room school.
“School kind of becomes the center of the community. It not only motivates children, but it motivates adults. Just the act of going to school gives kids better lives,” Darren said.
A highlight for the young children was school uniforms, since about half of the child population doesn’t even have clothes, Christine said. Jubilee Blanc is basically a squatter village that has been ravaged by floods that struck in 2004 and 2008.
There is no sanitation, running water or electricity.
This led the Youngs to participate in a project to build a composting toilet, since open defecation in fields poses a severe health risk. A composting toilet, or dry toilet, is similar to a traditional outhouse with the exception that a dry toilet separates liquid waste from solid waste with the goal of eventually using both as fertilizer.
“Kids and adults, a lot of them don’t have shoes, so when they walk through fields, hookworms go in through the soles of their feet, and to their stomach and cycle through their system,” Darren said.
The worms take up 20 percent of the food in the digestive system, and since many Haitians are already malnourished, this causes an extreme problem.
Therefore, Mike Soriano of Cornerstone Architectural Group LLC and John Healey of Healey Construction Management were consulted on how to build a toilet, keeping in mind that the residents of Jubilee Blanc are used to non-private, open bathroom practices.
Above: Christine and Darren Young (not pictured) are coordinating with Haitian workers to build a dry composting toilet in the area of Jubilee Blanc in Gonaïves, Haiti. Darren Young will return to Haiti in October, when he hopes to finish the project, which is 50 percent complete. Right: Darren Young (l) and a young Haitian boy show off their martial arts skills. Haitians have a knowledge of and love for kung fu movies, according to Young. Darren said that some Haitians won’t use a western-style toilet because they don’t understand it.
“It’s an upgrade to their situation and to their conditions, which is a positive thing that this may work,” he said.
Haitian workers were employed to build the toilet so that they would be able to understand the system, while also being exposed to the construction in case more toilets are needed in the future.
A crowd of people watched as the cement was mixed on-site, with the water being carried in 5-gallon buckets on women’s heads, and the cinder blocks being carried from the job site that was a quartermile away. Children wanted to take part, carrying even the smallest stones along, Christine said.
The project is about 50 percent completed, and Darren is planning to return to the town in October to complete the toilet.
The Youngs said it was interesting to see Haitian work methods employed, although sometimes the language barrier created difficulties.
“We wound up being observers and learning the process from them,” Darren said, while noting that this helped the Americans build relationships with the Haitians.
Another step to try to help the members of Gonaïves is the establishment of a bakery by Pastor Genada, who employs all deaf residents to bake bread, and who has put in a water filtration system that pumps out about 4,500 gallons of water a day.
“Obviously, clean water is a major issue in Haiti,” Darren said.
There is a feeding program that provides at least one meal of rice and beans, and sometimes fresh fruit or meat, to all schoolchildren and 200 of the poorest children in the neighborhood seven days a week.
However, despite basic needs such as food and water being sparse, volunteers have recognized the need for enhancing other areas of life. A church set up a swing set that draws dozens of children at a time.
Darren said, “It’s not just about formal education. They need to learn to read and learn to write, but we’re looking to give these kids a more robust …”
“ … quality of life,” Christine finished.
There is also the start of a soccer team for the Paralympics, focused on amputees, which would be the first time Haiti will participate.
“To kind of see everyone from a distance, in their body language and energy you could see so much happiness in these guys playing — because they were playing, which you don’t see so much in Haiti,” Darren said.
Overall, the Youngs said the children in Jubilee Blanc are very happy, always wanting to be hugged and picked up. They know martial arts from watching movies, and got to play with Darren, who used to study martial arts. They enjoyed over 100 gingerbread cookie-shaped dolls donated by Susan and Elizabeth Slater from Ventnor.
The Gonaïves children had similar personalities to the children in the orphanage where Darren and Christine taught in March, which they went to visit for a couple of hours in August.
Darren said the kids at the orphanage were happy to know that the Youngs remembered who they were, and they were excited to see photographs the Youngs printed out for them.
For more information on how to volunteer, donate items, or generally help out — either in Haiti or in the United States — email [email protected] or call 609-456- 0505. Monetary donations to support shipping costs can be sent to For This One, P.O. Box 7271, North Brunswick, NJ 08902.