'Hope for Haiti' raises money for stricken island nation

MOSES LAKE — About halfway through a dinner organized by a group of teens to raise money for relief efforts in Haiti, Scott Lang had an announcement. The teens set a goal of raising $5,500, and after ticket sales but before the silent auction and live dessert auction, they had raised $4,439. But they did even better than that – as of Sunday afternoon they had raised $7,705 after expenses, with the promise of an extra $75.

The “Hope for Haiti” dinner was organized by eight teenagers who took on the challenge to do something difficult, the result of a book they read in their homeschooling cooperative. Their parents organized the setup as a charitable organization and helped keep count of the money, and the kids did most of the rest.

“We had to do a lot of walking around and talking to people,” said Josh Cooper, one of the organizers. They sold the tickets and got the donations, planned the menu and helped with the cooking, set up the hall at the First Baptist Church, ran the audio-visual system.

Each of the eight brought a different skill set, Josh said, which helped make the project easier. But “I’ve got to say it was a lot of work.” In the end it was worth the work, he said.

The money will go the Haiti Bible Mission, located in the town of Jeremie, about 120 miles west of the country’s capital. The mission operates a pair of schools along with churches and outreach efforts – and both schools were directly in the path of Hurricane Matthew, which hit the island in October.

The Hope for Haiti program included an eyewitness report from a group of Moses Lake residents from Moses Lake Presbyterian Church, who went to the island about three weeks after the storm. Doug Frank was among them, and he said most of the houses, which are built of cinderblock, survived the storm but lost their roofs.

The school in Jeremie lost its roof but the building itself survived. “We did lose a school and we did lose a church,” Frank said. The downed school was in Tewoug, near Jeremie.

Rebuilding has begun – people have been working to replace the roofs on their homes, clear away the debris and cut up the downed trees. The immediate problem is a steady supply of food, Frank said, and money to keep the mission going.

Most of the country subsists on local farming, which was badly damaged by the storm. The land is coming back, Frank said. The Moses Lake group was in the Jeremie area for about a week. “In that time we saw the green coming back in ways you wouldn’t imagine. It’s like a greenhouse.” But there is a need for support in the meantime, he added.