Andrew Martins, Managing Editor
When an earthquake that measured 7.0 on the Richter scale tore through Haiti in 2010, the international community turned its attention to the devastation of the Caribbean island nation’s infrastructure and the massive loss of life that came as a result. Millions of dollars in relief poured in from countries all over the world and months were spent trying to pick up the pieces.
Seven years later, the Haitian people are still trying to return to some semblance of normalcy and one local non-profit organization known as The Because Project is looking to help better coordinate that effort.
“Our biggest focus is just making a brighter future for the next generation,” Rae Franco, the organization’s secretary, treasurer and co-founder, said.
Since its inception in June, the fledgling grassroots organization has been raising funds and gearing up for future plans to visit Haiti for various mission trips. Though The Because Project formally held its launch party/fundraiser last month, many of its members have already gone to the country to help since the 2010 earthquake.
Founded primarily in Bucks County, Penn., The Because Project held a combination launch party and fundraiser at the Titusville home of the non-profit’s president and co-founder, John Sullivan.
According to Franco, The Because Project stems from the efforts of one of its current partners, the Haiti Initiative. Today, the group works with that organization, as well as the Vladimir Bryant Foundation, the Mission House of Freedom Center and the Hope Alive Clinic.
Franco said working with those organizations allows The Because Project to help “provide shelter, education, medical and nutritional assistance to those in need.”
“What we kind of found as we went out to Haiti was that a lot of the organizations and non-profits there kind of stay in their own little bubble and don’t make bigger connections, so they have a limit to their resources,” she said. “The Because Project connects different organizations together so we can take them to the next level.”
Currently, Franco said the non-profit utilizes four different programs to meet those goals: Adopt-a-Box, Adopt-a-School, Sponsor a Child and Adopt-a-Doctor.
Through the Adopt-a-Box program, Franco said the project is able to ship 10 pallets a month to its partners. Each pallet, she said, contains thousands of dollars of food and supplies.
In the Adopt-a-School program, The Because Project helps Haitian communities fund their local schools, since the government usually does not cover those costs. Most recently, the group helped keep a school in Jacmel open.
“The community wasn’t able to fund the school so they reached out to us and now we’re working on paying the salaries of the teachers every month,” Franco said.
In order to do that, The Because Project pays approximately $200 a month for teachers’ salaries.
Similarly, the group’s Adopt-a-Doctor program helps local clinics in Haiti hire trained healthcare professionals, like the general physician and dentist that the group helped hire last month for the clinic at The Mission House of Freedom Center in Saint-Marc.
In the Adopt-a-Child program provided by The Because Project, the group works to help Haitian children with special needs who Franco says become victims of circumstance at birth.
“In Haiti, there’s a stigma with kids or people with special needs,” she said. “They call those people ‘cocobai,” which in English translates to ‘worthless.’”
As a result of that stigma, children with special needs end up enduring negligence, poor treatment from their family members and ostracization from society.
“A lot of kids that are born with special needs in Haiti are either locked away in their room and they don’t know their family … or sometimes it’s acceptable if you drown the child in a river or give them a poison concoction,” Franco said. “We sponsor a child so we can get them physical, speech and occupational therapy – whatever their needs are.”
In this instance, the group estimates that it costs approximately $2,000 to sponsor a child, which would go toward providing physical, speech, mental and occupational therapies, as well as any braces or prostheses they may need.
Though its launch party was The Because Project’s first official fundraising effort, Franco said the group is planning another event later this month, since they are planning to go back to Haiti in October.
Anyone looking to make monetary contributions to The Because Project can do so online at thebecauseproject.org or at facebook.com/thebecauseproject.
