• Socks
• Winter gloves
• Scarves/neck warmers
• Toques
• Men’s underwear, especially sizes small and medium
• Women’s underwear
• Long underwear (men’s and women’s)
• Sleeping bags and blankets
• T-shirts (large and extra large preferred)
• Rain ponchos and waterproof jackets
• Jeans (Mens) sizes 30 – 38
• Mens shoes sizes 8-12
• Razors (2 blade strongly preferred)
• Polysporin
• Shampoo
• Brushes

To donate, please contact Eric Cisterna at 416-964-7698, ext. 17 or eric@veahavta.org

For the next three days we encourage you to think about homelessness and all those that don’t have a home. Homelessness in a rich nation such as Canada is not necessary.

For the next three days we are having events that we would like you to attend.

Tonight we are having an open mic. Please join us for an evening of sharing our talents and stories.

OPEN MIC – TODAY AT 7:30 pm
280 GERRARD STREET EAST (BASEMENT COMMON ROOM)

Snacks and Refreshments will be served.

Hope to see you there.

Please see a complete list of events as well as our Comedy Show Flyer.

The Rabbi could not believe the generosity and care in organization that had been put into making the Kinder Kits.

I spent a few minutes describing the program. He was in disbelief when I quoted our explosion of growth and the means by which we attain our donations. He mentioned that it was the function of the Principal’s office to help those in need and he was truly grateful for the support so that they can focus on other issues.

Thank you for providing this opportunity to distribute the Kinder Kits. It’s wonderful to feel the goodness that we bring to the people we serve.

- Anonymous Kinder Kit Volunteer

We had yet another wonderful day. I must tell you that as I write there is a tremendous thunderstorm – the first rains I’ve experienced here so far.

Our morning began with a meeting with our partner Food For the Poor (FFTP) Haiti. Ve’ahavta is working with FFTP Canada to facilitate four shipments of food and one shipment of educational supplies to Haiti between now and March. FFTP Haiti is a massive operation with major distribution capabilities to 3,000 local partners. They also run local projects – feeding programs, a medical clinic, orphanages, schools, homes for the aged and the disabled. House of Hope (HOH) managed to get on their registered agencies list and now gets monthly allocations of rice and beans along with other items that FFTP may have on hand, including shoes, clothes, etc. On top of this, our shipments over the next seven months will ensure that HOH gets its full monthly requirement of rice and beans (they go through 30 fifty lb bags of rice per month) which will free up some funds to support other aspects of daily life at the orphanage. We are also planning to ship 3,000 kinder kits this December.

After our meeting, we were treated to incredible hospitality at Gachette’s beautiful home. We got to see the photos of his amazing children and ate a delicious traditional Haitian meal. Alison and I could hardly believe it when we saw a huge bottle of Manischewitz wine on his wine rack! He loves the stuff. We explained how that wine is the ultimate experience of shabbat in Jewish households around the world, and Gachette immediately suggested we open it. So if you can only imagine, Alison and I were soon sitting on a rooftop with Debra and Gachette in Port au Prince, sharing a meal, toasting with Manischewitz and teaching our colleagues how to say “l’chaim”!

Alice soon joined us, and after Debra and Gachette left for a meeting, she took us to a local market where we invested in the local economy by stocking up on crafts. One of Alice’s “kids”, an artist named Pierre Jules, had joined us and brought, at our request, some of his paintings which we were thrilled to purchase to support his art career. I am sure his beautiful work will hang proudly in Ve’ahavta’s offices and local classrooms very soon.

After returning to the hotel and reconnecting with Gachette and Debra, we soon left again. We had been invited to join Ruth Messinger, President of American Jewish World Service (AJWS), at a roundtable she had organized at a hotel in Petionville. Ruth has been in Haiti this week as well with a contingent of AJWS supporters. It was a tremendous opportunity to share with them the work that Ve’ahavta is doing in Haiti. We were then invited to join them for dinner and listen to two women connected with the microfinance organization Fonkoze share the incredible story of their work in Haiti. Fonkoze are local partners of AJWS. Ve’ahavta is a member of the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief (JCDR), a coalition in which AJWS plays a significant role. Fonkoze was a recipient of a grant from the JCDR. As contributors to the Coalition’s Haiti fund, we have directly supported Fonkoze’s work in Haiti and it was an unexpected and thrilling opportunity to receive an in depth overview of their incredible efforts here.

Gideon Hersher, JDC’s representative here in Haiti, was there as well. As he drove us back to our hotel, I reflected on a chat I had briefly with an editor of the Jewish Forward, who was at the roundtable this evening. She said, “there is a Jewish story here in Haiti”. Leaving the meeting I thought, “there certainly is”.

I can’t believe how quickly our time has flown and how full it has been. This is a wonderful and heartbreaking place. We have seen some incredible need and have seen firsthand how our work is making an impact at the community level. It has been wonderful to make connections with so many partners and learn more about some amazing work that is being done. There is still much to do.

Tomorrow morning we fly home and begin to build a three year plan for our continued work in Haiti. I am looking forward to that process. I must acknowledge and thank the wonderful Alison Cohen, a member of our Board and a long time Ve’ahavta supporter. Alison’s cross cultural experience (she cycles around the world) and project management savvy (she is a consultant in that area), as well as her humour and generosity of spirit and her deep sense of humanitarianism made her an invaluable addition to this trip and I am grateful for her involvement.

Thanks as well to my colleagues in Toronto who have been making every effort to share my postings and the incredible work Ve’ahavta continues to do with our network of supporters. See you all again very soon!

-Sarah

With each day, with each hour, I find my perspective shifting. I am realizing, for example, that while during my first few days here it seemed as though very little has happened here in terms of cleanup since the earthquake, I have been noticing a lot of activity on the streets revolving around the clearing of rubble. The challenge, I suppose, is where to take the tremendous amounts of rubble that have accumulated as a result of the earthquake.

This morning we met with the mayor of Gressier, the municipality in which the House of Hope is located. He shared with us his perspectives on the greatest areas of need in Gressier, which mostly center around the needs of the many children who have been rendered homeless and/or orphans since January. As you can imagine, many are going without basic necessities of life, including food and healthcare, as well as education, and, of course, supervision and structure.

We then met at the home of a local Catholic priest who is very much engaged with the grassroots activities currently in place to assist the residents of Gressier. A few other representatives of small, grassroots initiatives joined us for the purpose of sharing information about local needs (again, the needs of children were described as the highest and most urgent priority).

We then drove to Leogane, an area that was completely devastated by the earthquake. Strangely, after driving around Port Au Prince and to and from Gressier numerous times over the past few days, it is strange but truthful to report that at a certain point, the presence of endless scenes of collapsed buildings and rubble almost seem to become part of the natural landscape. The images are so pervasive and so frequently observed that it becomes less shocking. However, Leogane once again invoked a sense of shock as we contemplated the level of destruction and spoke with local survivors who described the aftermath of the earthquake – the bodies in the streets, the mass burials, the horrible smells that hung in the air as bodies decayed in buildings, as no one could extricate them from the rubble. Again, there were so many tents, massive new tent cities that will undoubtedly be there for a long, long time, necessitating intentional planning and support to help create communities in these areas that function and thrive, at least until the residents can be rehoused. No one seems to be able to predict when that might be.

Alison and I had the opportunity to sit with Alice Barthole, the founder of the House of Hope, to get a clear sense of the structure of the orphanage and its day to day activities. As we spoke inside a sheltered area that serves as a temporary church and school as the former structures were demolished, we noticed a group of teenagers assembling who began to sing. Their voices rose in the most beautiful harmony and we couldn’t help but watch them and taker pictures and video of their beautiful voices which I will post soon. They are excited to see themselves on you tube once I get a chance to upload the videos.

Eventually, we drove back to the House of Hope, where we were greeted with such joy from the kids. There was a real difference between their response to us yesterday and today. Yesterday, it took them a long time to warm up, they were quiet and watchful and serious until we had been there for several hours. Today, they were boisterous and joyful and smiling and full of hugs. We gratefully accepted cuddles and obligingly took many photos of them which they loved seeing on our digital camera.

When I first arrived at the House of Hope yesterday, I had felt a lot of sadness. It was so painful to contemplate the fact that many of these children are in need. By the end of today, my perspective had once again transformed as I realized that the children of the House of Hope are amongst the more fortunate ones. They are housed and clothed and fed, and they are being raised in an environment that is contained within the warm and loving heart of a very special woman named Alice. They are loved, and that is apparent and beautiful to see.

We said goodbye to the children and they sung us out of the gate.

On the way home we watched the activities of the market, peppering Gachette with questions about what we were seeing and what we had observed. Gachette bought us some sugar cane to try and we all munched on it thoughtfully; sweet mouthfuls of cane juice as we drove away from the water and began climbing the streets once more to our hotel.

I hope to upload some photos tonight so my posts can be accompanied by some images. It is so important for Ve’ahavta’s supporters to know that we have been able to so closely monitor the incredible projects that we have supported in Haiti since January. There is still tremendous potential here for us to continue doing meaningful work and to affect positive change in many lives.

Until tomorrow…
Sarah

This beautiful and inspiring card features original artwork by Ve’ahavta’s Founding Director, Avrum Rosensweig.

Click to sponsor a Kinder Kit today!

Gachette met us at 8am. Gachette is the country representative of Canadian Feed the Children (CFTC), a partner agency with whom Ve’ahavta has been supporting the House of Hope. Gachette is a haitian man in his forties, a father, and incredible at his job. He manages the relationships with CFTC’s four partners in Haiti. He is warm with a wonderful sense of humour and has been sharing a great deal of information about Haiti and its history over the past two days. Gachette took us to CFTC’s field office, and then took us downtown to show us the utter devastation that was left in the areas hardest hit by the earthquake. The presidential palace is destroyed, and a massive tent city has sprung up across the street. Displaced people are showering and washing up in full view – there is no privacy, they are utterly exposed. Certain infrastructure seems to have been put in place in some camps – portable toilets for example and generators, important resources though signs that the camps themselves are becoming more established, less temporary, even permanent – at least for the foreseeable future. We were left gasping and sighing as we passed by building after building that were collapsed, some partially, some reduced to complete rubble.

There is rubble everywhere. I can’t imagine what this city must have been like in the immediate aftermath of January’s disaster considering how little seems to have been done from a clean up, demolition and reconstruction point of view six months later.

We began the long drive to Gressier. We have begun to learn that poor roads and tons of traffic make traveling anywhere unpredictable. As Gachette says, “we are not so close, but we are not so far”. Eventually we made it to Gressier and saw the sign for House of Hope (HOH). We pulled into the gates and pulled up to see all 193 of the orphanage’s children assembled to welcome us. We were treated to some singing and warm greetings. The children were beautiful and sweet. It is so painful to contemplate children without parents or families. Not all the kids at HOH are orphans in the true sense of the word – many are economic orphans, or kids whose families can’t afford to take care of them. We met a few heartbreaking cases, including one boy with sad eyes who witnessed his home collapse on top of his parents, rendering him alone and living on the streets until someone brought him to Alice.

We then spent several hours meeting with Alice and one of her staff, discussing current and potential projects, and touring the grounds. We saw the vehicle we helped purchase, the sites for potential reconstruction projects, the chicken coops. We were treated to a beautiful lunch with the kids, and then to wonderful music by a troubadour group of Haitian musicians. We all listened, enjoyed, danced. Then we were treated to a show that a number of kids had prepared. Finally it was time to drive back. We received beautiful gifts of incredible paitings created by a couple of residents at the orphanage. We left, happy to know that we will be back tomorrow.

The drive home to close to two hours, the passing landscape weirdly becoming increasingly familiar – the throngs of people, the crowded markets, the piles of garbage clogging the canals and streets, the colourful tap-taps (minbuses) that are teeming with people, the rubble, the many SUVs with NGO logos, even the UN blue helmets, whom we’ve seen everywhere. Back at the hotel, we had the chance to shower and relax for a bit before meeting with Gideon Hersher, a lovely man who is the JDC rep in Haiti. It was wonderful to have dinner with him, an Israeli who has spent the past five months overseeing JDC’s projects and networking with other local NGOs. He was able share an incredible amount of information, including a few things that I didn’t know – for example, there are 21 jews currently living in Haiti, and Haiti opened up its doors to Jewish refugees after the holocaust. Gideon also gave us an update on an incredible rehab clinic we have supported which is being operated by Magen David Adom. The clinic provides free treatment and fitting and prosthetics for patients who have lost limbs in the earthquake. He was thrilled to meet us and to let us know that Ve’ahavta was one of the primary supporters of this clinic and one of the first to pledge support early on in the aftermath of the quake.

A full day, and now my eyes are closing. Time to rest. Tomorrow we look forward to meeting with the mayor of Gressier and the travelling to Leogane.

Until tomorrow,
Sarah

It seems strange to be going to Haiti.  Neither of us had been and we had no idea what to expect. We met our colleague, Debra Kerby of CFTC at the gate, ready to start the adventure.

Landing in Port Au Prince was almost disconcerting in the sense that it was so easy, so relatively close to the hub that is the Miami airport where we had caught our connecting flight. From the air, the city looked orderly and beautiful. Our plane was full of all sorts of people – young families, NGO people, individual volunteers, members of church groups, members of relief teams, people who looked like they just might be on vacation. I thought of the people who exited their flight last January 11th, some of whom wouldn’t survive the disaster that they could never have known was looming before them.

Exiting onto the tarmac, a clean new American Airlines shuttle was waiting.  This impressed me – possibly because I am so used to flying into the Guyana airport where one just walks off the plane and into the airport.  The shuttle felt like a contradiction – a modern luxury on a tarmac where one could see boxes of humanitarian aid and large containers waiting to be cleared…vestiges I imagine from what must have been masses of supplies that arrived here in the aftermath of the disaster faster than they could be distributed.  The shuttle took us to immigration and the baggage claim, which was a scene of total chaos.  Eventually, we found our bags and wrested them off the conveyor belt, onto our baggage cart and wove through the tangle of people and suitcases and carts, emerging outdoors to a new chaotic scene of porters eager to help with our bags.  We connected very shortly after with Gachette, CFTC’s country representative, whom I had met a few months ago in Toronto, as well as Alice Barthole, the head of The House of Hope Orphanage.  It is nearly impossible to believe that Alice is an older woman – she is vivacious and so young looking, driving a gleaming new pick up truck which Ve’ahavta and CFTC helped purchase.

Getting into Gachette’s car, we began the long journey from the airport and began seeing the remnants of last winter’s earthquake immediately.  Massive tent cities erected directly across from the airports, every city park transformed into a sea of tents, laundry hanging, children weaving in and out.  Rubble still everywhere, so many buildings collapsed like fallen layer cakes, grotesquely contorted, many building sustained cracks like jagged veins in their foundations and walls. 35 seconds.  It only took 35 seconds to cause so much devastation.

Many, many people, selling shoes, jeans, underwear, fruits, plants- you name it.  Many many other people walking, minibuses careening by packed with bodies.   So much traffic, often at a standstill.

We eventually arrive in Petitionville, where our hotel is.  You can tell this is a wealthier neighbourhood, with leafy streets and funky buildings.  Our hotel, villa creole, was partially destroyed in the earthquake, the wing that was reduced to rubble cordoned off by yellow tape. The main kitchen was destroyed in the quake so now one must order in from a local restaurant for meals.  This hotel is another contradiction – beautiful yet partially destroyed, the repairs taking a long time as the hotel raises funds and works on plans for its restoration.  Meanwhile, a couple caresses in the middle of its lovely pool, two other guests taking advantage of the wireless internet on their laptops poolside.

Tomorrow will be an exciting day – we are traveling to Gressier to visit Alice and the House (HOH) of hope orphanage.  We are incredibly excited to spend time with Alice and finally meet the kids at HOH, and of course, begin to discuss plans for our continued support of HOH.  I am also looking forward to distributing the messages of hope that students of Leo Baeck created for the residents of HOH.

Until tomorrow….

Sarah