Annual Report to the Parish

Dear Cathedral Parishioners,
It is now one year since the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception embarked on a twinning relationship with the parish of Notre Dame d’Altagrâce in Layaye, Haiti. We in the Haiti ministry want to use this opportunity to bring everyone in the parish up-to-date with regard to the accomplishments, current projects, finances and future goals of this ministry. Of course, we first would like to extend our sincere appreciation to Fr. Val Handwerker, the members of the Pastoral Council and especially the parish at large for your most generous financial and spiritual support of this ministry.

WHY HAITI?
Before its formation, members of this ministry were searching for ways in which the Cathedral parish could reach out in a meaningful way to the neediest and most desperate members of our human family. Through much reflection, reading and prayer, we identified Haiti as a place where we could turn. We learned that Haiti finds itself at the top or nearly so of many lists for bad socioeconomic indicators:
•Haiti is the poorest country in western hemisphere and one of the poorest five countries in the world, with the average Haitian subsisting on just $1 a day.
•Haiti is the most water-poor country in the world according to the international water poverty index
•The per capita expenditure for health care in Haiti is only about 1% of that in the U.S.
•The infant mortality rate in Haiti is over 10 fold higher than that of the U.S.
•Over 250,000 people in Haiti have HIV/AIDS, compared with 900,000 in the U.S. a country with a population 37 times larger than that of Haiti.
•Over 50% of the population is illiterate, and only 50% of children receive any elementary education

These facts and figures clearly indicate a tremendous need in Haiti. We therefore sought a way to develop a direct relationship with those in need in Haiti.

ESTABLISHMENT OF CATHEDRAL HAITI MINISTRY
The Parish Twinning Program of the Americas (PTPA) was started over 20 years ago by Ms. Theresa Patterson of Nashville, TN. The PTPA works to link Catholic parishes in the United States to parishes in Haiti with the goal of fostering relationships that help to bring dignity and justice to the lives of Haitians and spiritual renewal and focus to American Catholics. This approach offered us exactly what we were searching for, namely the opportunity to intimately join another parish and to grow in faith and solidarity. Therefore, in May 2004, we invited Ms. Patterson, together with Fr. Ilric Louis-Jeune, pastor of the newly formed Notre Dame d’Altagrâce parish in Layaye Haiti, to visit the Cathedral parish. They met with members of the ministry team, and Fr. Ilric concelebrated Mass with Fr. Val. Everyone who recalls his visit will remember the spiritual and emotional response of the Cathedral parish to Fr. Ilric’s faith, sincerity and passion on behalf of his people. In the wake of Fr. Ilric’s visit, we obtained the approval of Fr. Val and the Pastoral Council to embark on a twinning relationship with the parish of Notre Dame d’Altagrâce.

MINISTRY LEADERSHIP
Currently, the Mache Ansanm ministry is jointly led by Debra Bartelli, Chuck Kolesar, and Bob Lorsbach. Pat Burns heads communication efforts including maintenance of our blogsite (www.memphistohaiti.blogspot.com), and Lois Chamblin is head of fundraising coordination.

FINANCES
With the approval of Fr. Val and the Pastoral Council, we initiated monthly “Haiti Sunday” collections to help provide a baseline level of financial support. We began with the modest goal of collecting just $1 per month per parish family, or about $600 monthly. After 10 months of collections, we are delighted to report that the parish has responded very generously by providing an average of over $2000 of monthly support for the ministry. In addition, our first parish wide fundraiser in January 2005 (coinciding with the feast day of our sister parish’s patron saint) raised over $7000. Finally, Ms. Dixie Brown, a member of the Haiti ministry team, kindly donated the necessary funds for Fr. Ilric to purchase a generator to provide electricity for the rectory and church in Layaye. For all of this support, we in the ministry sincerely thank the Cathedral parish.

What have we done with these funds? As detailed below, to date (11/04 – 8/05), we have provided Fr. Ilric with $7950 of support for schools and other parish administrative costs. We are currently sending $800 monthly to Fr. Ilric for support of the schools in Layaye.

$5100 monthly support for parish schools
$1500 tuition costs for Layaye high school children
$1000 emergency funds to Fr. IIric
$ 350 donations from IC kindergarten and high school French club
$ 254 camera for Fr. Ilric

Finally, we want to stress that 100% of the funds raised by the parish have or will be used to assist our sister parish. All of the costs incurred by members of the ministry for work on the ministry and travel to Haiti have been paid by these ministry members themselves.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS
During the first full year of its existence at the Cathedral, we have achieved several important milestones:
• Initiation of twinning relationship with Notre Dame d’Altagrâce
• Initiation of monthly collections to provide basal support for the ministry
• Through the parish IC-A-Need project, collected and gave to the people of Layaye, school
supplies, toys, basic medical and personal hygiene items
• First visit (October 2004) to Haiti to meet the people of Layaye & gain better understanding of
needs/challenges faced by the people there
• Began monthly support of schools in Layaye
• Held first major, parish-wide fundraiser for ministry in January 2005
• Hosted Fr. Ilric’s second visit to IC in May 2005

By necessity, much of our effort during this first year has been directed toward getting the ministry on its feet financially and in assessing the needs of our sister parish. We felt that an important aspect of the latter would be to actually visit our sister parish so that we would have a better understanding of the needs and challenges that our sisters and brothers in Layaye face daily in their lives.

ONGOING AND FUTURE PROJECTS:
• Financial support for schools in Layaye. There is no public education system in Haiti. Fr. Ilric and the people of Layaye understand the importance of education and strongly desire that their children have an opportunity to attend school. We will continue to support the elementary schools in Layaye and the surrounding villages.

• Provision of water treatment kits & water purifier. The provision of clean water to our sisters and brothers in Layaye and the surrounding villages is an essential first step in helping them to improve their health and overall economic situation. We are purchasing a portable, solar-powered water treatment unit for Layaye. We are also going to enroll in a program ran by Gift of Water, a non-profit organization that has long worked in Haiti, that will provide 400 families during the first year with portable low maintenance water filtration units.

• Establishment of professional school. Together with Fr. Ilric, we have agreed to fund the establishment of a professional trade school in Layaye. As in many underdeveloped countries, the lack of job skills drives many people from rural areas into large urban centers, such as Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, where they are far from families and often the targets of exploitation and violence. Helping the people of Layaye to obtain the skills they need to support themselves is critical to enabling them to live dignified, self-sufficient lives in Layaye.
• Worm treatment program. Soil-transmitted helminthic infections (hookworms, whipworms and roundworms) are a major source of morbidity in children in many rural areas throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, including Haiti. As a component of our visits to Layaye, we will initiate a deworming program. For only about 25¢ a child, we can provide effective treatment against these parasitic worms that are a major contributing factor to anemia and malnutrition in the children of Haiti.

• Vision program. During our visit to Layaye we encountered perhaps 2 or 3 people wearing eyeglasses. Sadly, this observation reflects the fact that the people of Layaye have no access to eye care. During the upcoming trip in February 2006, Dr. Jared Powelson (son of Deacon Powelson) will join us and hold optometry clinics in Layaye. We have already started collecting eyeglasses for these clinics, and Dr Powelson has generously agreed to clean and service donated eyeglasses.

• Medical/mission trips. Currently, there is virtually no medical or dental care available for the people of Layaye. The nearest hospital, Sainte Thérèse Hospital, is located in Hinche which is a 1-2 hour hike on foot. Mr. Chuck Kolesar has been working hard to establish a relationship between our ministry and Partners in Health (PIH), a major health care and human rights force in Haiti directed by Dr. Paul Farmer (the subject of the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder); PIH also operates Sainte Thérèse Hospital. Chuck is currently working to identify individuals in Layaye who can work as community health works to assist PIH staff and us in delivering health care to the people of Layaye. As our ministry develops, we hope to be able to organize one or two medical trips to Layaye each year. Therefore, if you or someone you know has medical, dental, or nursing skills, please contact us if you or they would be interested in joining this effort.

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE
During his first visit to the Cathedral in May 2004, Fr. Ilric delivered the Sunday Gospel reading from John that, as Providence would have it, has become the underpinning for our ministry:

“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

In the years to come, we hope and pray that the Haiti ministry will continue to grow and be an important manifestation of the compassion and mercy that Christ implores us to have for our sisters and brothers, particularly those who are the most impoverished and vulnerable. An important lesson that we in the ministry have learned is that each of us, irrespective of what our skills and talents might be, have something to contribute to this ministry. Therefore, we invite you to join us as we continue to work to bring compassion and justice to the lives of the people of Layaye. On behalf of the entire Haiti Ministry team and our sister parish in Layaye, we thank you for your generous financial support, kind words, and most of all your prayers. We pray that the Cathedral parish will continue to “walk” physically and spiritually, with our sisters and brothers in Layaye.

Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.

Elie Weisel