Providing for the poor in Haiti

CHESTER  Donations of large shirts are not needed. That’s because the desperately poor people of the dual Catholic parishes of Dufailly-Dumond in the Hinche Diocese suffer from such a serious lack of food that they have small, bony frames — as well as a few distended stomachs. There in rural northern Haiti, they live in wooden huts without doors, windows or adequate roofs. Some villagers don’t have some of the most basic articles of clothing, such as shorts. In the most remote areas, they have to walk two hours to get water for their families.

So to help meet many of these urgent needs, the Haiti Twinning Committee of St. Lawrence the Martyr Parish here has been sending faith communities in the villages of Dufailly and Dumond — its sister parishes — a series of large care packages with love over the four years since the outreach started. These shipments contain appropriate-sized clothing (no larges), linens, pots and pans and school supplies. St. Lawrence also imports hope to the area: paying for education in a high school and two elementary schools to help break the cycle of poverty that three committee members witnessed firsthand during a mission trip there in February.

“We believed that we had a very good understanding of the needs there. However, to actually witness the abject poverty firsthand is life altering,” said Christine Colannino, committee chairperson, who made her first trip to the island nation. “While Haiti is a ‘developing’ country and is — by far the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere — there were smiles for us everywhere we traveled,” she said.

These happy Haitians had no hesitation in expressing their gratitude to St. Lawrence, during the visit of three committee members — Colannino; Father Nick Bozza, pastor; and Terry Leing — to the parishes. They drove more than 90 minutes north of Haiti’s capital, Port au Prince, and up into the highlands, home to mountains and plateaus, where Father Michelet Lamarre, pastor of the two faith communities. He also administers a territory that also includes six chapels in the rural outskirts; St. Francois d’Assise, a combined middle school and high school in Dufailly, and two elementary schools. Many of them have received help from the Chester parish, Colannino said.

“We have so much and they have so little. So one of the aims is charity. It also ties in with the Year of Mercy because it’s part of the Corporal Works of Mercy,” said Father Bozza, a first-time visitor to Haiti who noted that Father Lamarre has visited St. Lawrence twice. “Another aim is fraternity. Pope Francis says that we need to get to know the people we are serving,” he said.

The committee members visited St. Francois d’Assise, the middle school and high school that St. Lawrence helped to build — a simple block structure with sturdy walls, roof, floor and doors, which is the only institution of its kind within a two-hour radius. Also located in Dufailly, the school educates 83 students in six classes, who learn a wide range of subjects, including the languages of French, English and Spanish. Father Lamarre will add an 11th-grade class in the fall, Colannino said.

“Many of these children are the first in their family to achieve such a high level of education,” Colannino said.

Later on the trip, the committee members traveled — by mule and on foot — up the mountains to visit one of the elementary schools — much less equipped than the high school in Dufailly in the remote village of Delagon. In beautifully pressed uniforms, the students walked part way to greet them, singing welcome songs and escorting them down the mountain to their town, where they were guests of honor at their church. Three locations served as the “school” — classrooms in the church, an outside shelter that consists of tarps hung on sticks with a leaky roof and a dirt patch under a tree. Students have no desks, chairs, paper or writing implements, committee members said.

The team from St. Lawrence visited the rural village during the dry season, when it has no water. All villagers must walk more than two hours to get water for their families. It is also over this rocky and steep terrain that many of the children have to walk for two hours each way to attend school. There, a lunch program provides a small amount of rice and two small cans of fish for 131 children — often all that a child will have to eat for the day. There, even the goats, cows and dogs look scrawny and the trees, bushes and banana plants become withered, said Colannino.

Along with the smiles of the local residents, the committee members also enjoyed the celebration of the Mass in Dufailly, which exceeds 90 minutes and is lifted by “parishioners, who have beautiful voices and love to sing,” said Leing, who was making her second visit to Haiti. Colannino said that she enjoyed the quiet of the rural setting, where she could collect her thoughts undisturbed by the “outside noise” of life experienced in the U.S.

The Haiti Twinning Committee originally started four years ago with St. Lawrence’s former pastor, Msgr. Paul Knauer, now retired. He, Leing and two other parishioners first visited St. Francois in 2012. The committee has organized second collections at Mass for donations and several drives for needed items in the parish, including some redirecting of merchandise donated to the parish’s thrift sale in its barn on its property. Then the faith community ships these goods to Father Lamarre once yearly through the organization Parish Twinning Program of America. St. Lawrence also sends the priest thousands of dollars a year for teachers’ salaries, Colannino said.

“I…thank you deeply for your support and precious brotherly concern for the Dufailly people. Thank you for this labor of love and big heart,” Father Lamarre wrote to Colannino in a Feb. 7, 2014 email in gratitude for a large shipment. “We don’t expect you to take care of us totally but help us move forward and…land where we want.”

For the future, the committee endeavors to address many pressing challenges for the poor people of the area, such as providing clean water and food; providing desks, chairs, computers, textbooks and other educational supplies; and offering more financial support to Father Lamarre, Colannino said.

“We do a lot of praying [as a committee]. We ask God to guide us to do the right things. We learn as we go. God’s hands have been guiding this [outreach]. This is more than man can accomplish alone,” Colannino said.

St. Lawrence’s Haiti Twinning Program continues to seek donations for its annual shipments and possibly another partner parish that could assist with special projects or collections.

[Information: Christine Colannino at

(201) 314-9824 or [email protected].]