“What already was an impossible situation has become disastrous,” says Sandy Doyle, the church’s director of Haiti missions. “Things there are really, really desperate.”
Things there are really, really desperate.
The church already was sponsoring three meals a week to schoolchildren in the village of LaMare, but is now expanding that to five meals a week through June, when classes end. “Hopefully, that frees up food at home for siblings who aren’t in school,” Doyle says.
The church also is working to distribute beans, rice, oil and flour to 315 families identified by the local village pastor, Doyle says. She will travel to the country in six weeks and hopes to strategize with local residents on developing long-term solutions.
The church “adopted” the village several years ago, providing food and paying the salaries of all the local schoolteachers. To read a previous online Covenant news service story about the ministry, see LaMare.
Like many other impoverished countries around the world, Haiti is suffering food shortages due to skyrocketing prices. The price of rice has more than tripled in Haiti over the past year, Doyle says.
According to the United Nations, Haiti is one of the least developed countries in the world, and the poorest in the western hemisphere. More than half of the population lives on less than $1 per day and chronic malnutrition is widespread.
