St. Mary's Support of our Companion Diocese of Haiti
St. Mary's efforts to support our companion diocese are ongoing and primarily focused on Lespwa Timoun, a nutrition clinic for critically malnourished children operated by Carmel Valdema, a Haitian public health nurse, and wife of Episcopal Priest the Rev. Fritz Valdema. A permanent home is currently being built for the clinic with funds from churches in the southeastern part of the US. Currently half of the building has been constructed.
The Mission of Lespwa Timoun is to address Haiti’s overwhelming malnutrition problem that kills a large percentage of infants and toddlers. Lespwa Timoun provides nutritionally enhanced meals, vitamins, and immunizations, health monitoring for children and nutrition education for parents. Approximately 1,000 children are served in the nutrition program each year, and the average cost per year to serve a child is $120. The permanent site for Lespwa Timoun will include a clinic staffed with doctors, dentists, nurses and health care workers, a pharmacy, a well which will provide clean water, an orchard and a garden.
One in twelve children born in Haiti today will not live to celebrate their fifth birthday according to recent World Health Organization statistics. Malnutrition is a significant factor in the mortality rate. Lespwa Timoun is addressing the malnutrition problem in Haiti and improving the lives of hundreds of children. The completion of the permanent home for Lespwa Timoun will allow Carmel Valdema and her staff to reach more children and sale more lives.
Updates from Haiti!
September 2011
Dear Friends, 
We would like to share with you the first harvest from Lespwa Timoun Thank you for helping with garden seeds Dave's team was the first team having tasted it. We are so exciting to see the garden. Next week we will have a demonstration with mothers who are in the nutrition program we will be able to use some vegetables. This week we got some rains!
Thank you so much.
Carmel and Pere Val
August 2011
We received this update from Ted and Lisa Cassidy, parishioners from St. Paul’s in Murfreesboro, TN. The Cassidy's also participated in the May mission trip to Haiti with Huey Gardner, Seth Sargent, Phil Black, Melissa Strange, Ed Allen, Liza Nix, and Mike Hubbard.
Hello Friends,
I am happy to report that the Haiti garden is planted, and the irrigation system is in place and working well! After the plot was tilled we arranged to hire additional help to make planting rows and planting the seedlings and seeds. We awoke Friday morning to the normal Haiti routine, coffee, shower, breakfast, then headed off to the garden site around 10am. When we arrived on site, our hired workers had about half the garden rowed up in 120 foot long rows. While our help finished making rows we started planting our seedling that we started in May and also the seedlings from DH
In the garden there is a 120 foot row of each of these different veggies for our friends in Haiti: Swiss chard, peppers, eggplant, beans, squash, watermelons, corn, okra, cantaloupe, and beets. We left 5 rows for tomatoes and sweet potatoes to be planted after we return home. We left the garden in the care of 2 farm workers who will maintain the garden for us; they are both farmers by trade and give us hope for ongoing success with the garden.
[We are also pleased to report that] with a few exceptions all the moringa trees we planted together are growing well. We also arranged to have our workers keep all the trees watered and cared for too. We were not able to find a tiller to purchase while we were there, but used the money for the tiller to purchase 1 of 4 1000 gallon water tanks for the clinic water system.
Ted and Lisa Cassidy
Read about our latest mission trip to Haiti (May 23-27, 2011).
