Haiti 2006

Haiti

2007-02-24T19:39:00.000-06:00

The news about Haiti

I would like to inform you that I will graduate in May 5th, 2007. After the graduation,I writting a letter to Mr. Rene G. Preval stating my interest in helping the universities and other major projects in Haiti. I do also apply for a job here in the US to work in Haiti but I do not know what the result will be untill the 3rd week of March. Hope that everything goes well with you all- and I am requesting your prayer for my dreams to help this country comes.

Gary Paraison
Former Clinic Mobil Coordinator at Hospital St. Croix of Haiti

HSC update

2005-09-17T21:38:00.000-05:00

Hi Holt:

Hopital Sainte Croix is in the midst of administrative changes. Bishop
Duracin ( Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti) has appointed a new
hospital administrator and chief financial officer, and Jack LaFontant is to
be the chief medical officer. It is not clear if Jack LaFontant will remain
at HSC or not.

Cathy Speraw Dorvil is now Interim Director of the Children's Nutrition
Program of Haiti, and is doing a super job for us. She is based in
Chattanooga, TN, and makes quarterly trips to and from Haiti to monitor the
Hearth Program in the villages, the in-hospital malnutrition program, and to
provide continuing education for the monitrices.

The Children's Nutrition Program will sponsor several trips from Chattanooga
to Leogane in early 2006. Two mobile medical teams plan to go the first two
weeks of January 2006, and Cathy will be there to make arrangements for the
team's visit, and to go out with them on the clinics. My husband, Chuck,
hopes to lead a mobile clinic team from the 18-25 of February.

We are keeping an eye on the political unrest, and will just have to see
what happens in the next few months. At this time, the Presbyterian Church
USA has evacuated all of their missionary personnel out of Haiti, and will
not sanction mission teams to travel in Haiti under the sponsorship of a
PCUSA church. Katie Griggs, the HSC guesthouse coordinator is back in
Kansas doing a semester of college work. A decision has not been made yet
about when she will be allowed to return to Haiti.

Peace!

Martha Sternbergh
mwsternbergh@comcast.net

N. Texas CEO Wants to be President of Haiti

2005-08-30T09:17:00.000-05:00

from Ft. Worth Star-Telegram Posted on Sun, Aug. 28, 2005;

The walls of Haitian-American entrepreneur Dumarsais "Dumas" Simeus' Mansfield office bear witness to his success -- proud photos, awards and magazine covers recognizing his $100 million food empire in the rapidly growing city.

His humble roots are apparent, too: a framed photograph of a two-room shack with an aluminum roof in the village of Pont-Sonde, Haiti, where he was born 65 years ago.

Those roots have inspired Simeus, a Southlake resident and one of the nation's top black businessmen, in his role as a member of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's Haiti Task Force. Now he is taking on the greatest challenge of his life: seeking the presidency of Haiti.

Simeus declared his candidacy last week, standing in front of that childhood home in Haiti. He says he brings more to the table than just a love for his country, where his parents still live. He brings the business savvy of a maverick CEO.

Haiti is "a country of 8 million customers that's into bankruptcy. And you need a professional leader, a professional executive to come and get the country out of bankruptcy," Simeus said in a recent interview in his second-floor office at Simeus Foods International, a Mansfield-based food-manufacturing company whose customers include Denny's, T.G.I. Friday's and Burger King.

Critics say the world in which Simeus has succeeded is very different from the one he wants to take over.

"It's impossible for someone from the diaspora to maneuver through the political land mines in Haiti," said Marie Florence Bell, chairwoman of Bush's task force, who is among a small group of south Florida Haitian-Americans who have hosted informal get-to-know-you sessions with Haiti's presidential candidates in recent months.

"The rules of engagement are completely different; it's a mind-boggling, complex, multilayered society," she said.

Eligibility

Bell and others say that while they respect Simeus' accomplishments, he should take note of the last Haitian who tried -- but failed -- to stabilize an impoverished and volatile Haiti: longtime south Florida resident and current interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue.

"After seeing what Gerard Latortue has done to the country, I would rather have someone be president of Haiti who has lived in Haiti for the past five years and knows what is going on," said Charles-Henri Baker, a leading opponent of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who intends to run for president as an independent.

Simeus said the Haitian people have misunderstood why Latortue has failed.

"It's not the fact that he's been in the diaspora," said Simeus, a father of three. "It's the fact that Latortue is not a proven leader, a proven executive. He's never had to manage and run complex organizations. That is the only reason why he has not delivered."

Simeus faces enormous challenges before the Nov. 6 election. He must get 100,000 signatures by Sept. 10 to qualify for the ballot as an independent. And he must energize a disenchanted electorate while staving off attempts by Haiti's political class to derail his presidential bid.

Many Haitian politicians have been waiting in the wings since the fall of dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier in 1986 and Aristide's departure last year.

They argue that Simeus can't be president because he has lived abroad for 44 years.

Article 135 of the Haitian Constitution says a presidential candidate must "be a native-born Haitian and never have renounced Haitian nationality." The candidate must also have resided in the country for five consecutive years before the election.

Simeus said he has never renounced his Haitian citizenship despite being a U.S. citizen. And he argues that constitutional requirements don't apply in any case, saying Haiti has been operating outside of the constitution since Aristide's ouster in 2004.

Big dreams

The story of how the son of an uneducated farmer and a merchant woman became a successful American businessman is about never losing sight of the dream.

Like many Haitian youngsters, Dumarsais Simeus stood on the docks of St. Marc, near his hometown, and dreamed of going where the boats came from.

His parents sold a plot of land to help him buy a plane ticket to attend college in the United States. He enrolled at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee before eventually graduating from Howard University in Washington with a degree in electrical engineering. He earned a master of business administration from the University of Chicago.

He eventually landed a job with TLC Beatrice Foods International, where he developed a reputation for being a taskmaster and "fixing what's broken."

He honed his business savvy as president and chief operating officer at Beatrice, the nation's largest black-owned company.

His Mansfield firm, which he bought in 1996 with a $55 million loan, is Texas' largest black-owned company and the country's largest black-owned food-processing plant, according to Black Enterprise magazine. Through it all, Simeus kept in close touch with his homeland.

Though he brought 40 relatives to the United States, including 16 siblings, a foundation bearing his name provides health care, food, clothing and education to residents of Haiti's breadbasket, the Artibonite Valley.

"The bottom line is he is a native son of Haiti, clearly born and raised in Haiti, went out in the world to make a success and he has kept constant connection with Haiti," said Rob Allyn, a Dallas-based GOP political strategist hired by Simeus.

The firm has helped engineer victories for candidates in the Bahamas, Indonesia and Mexico, as well as for the George W. Bush gubernatorial campaign in Texas.

"Anyone would agree that Dumas Simeus has never forgotten where he came from," Allyn said.

IN THE KNOW

Dumarsais "Dumas" Simeus

Age: 65

Birthplace: Pont-Sonde, Haiti, in the Artibonite region

Education: Immigrated to Florida in 1961 to attend Florida A&M University; electrical engineering degree, Howard University; MBA, University of Chicago

Title: Chief executive of Simeus Foods International, which employs 400-plus workers at its Mansfield and North Carolina operations

Personal: Wife, Kimberly, and three children. Helps provide health care and potable water in Pont-Sonde through his Simeus Foundation.

Letter by supporters of Children’s Medical Mission of Haiti

2005-06-28T11:01:00.000-05:00

June 10, 2005

The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church USA
815 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10017

Dear Bishop Griswold:

I am writing on behalf of the board of the Children’s Medical Mission of Haiti to ask for your support for Haiti.

Last June the Executive Council passed a resolution concerning the importance of the Diocese of Haiti to the life of the Episcopal Church. Last April you wrote former Secretary of State Colin Powell asking, among other things, for the United States to: (1) strengthen the international peacekeeping force so that humanitarian needs can be met; (2) devote the resources necessary to rebuild Haiti; and (3) end the current policy of interdiction and summary forced return of asylum seekers and designate the country of Haiti for Temporary Protected Status for a period of eighteen months.

Today, conditions in Haiti are much worse than they were a year ago. Civil order has totally broken down.

Kidnappings occur on a daily basis. Gangs control major sections of Port-au-Prince and areas of the countryside. Gun battles are a regular occurrence in the street outside St. Vincent’s School for Handicapped Children in Port-au-Prince. Haitian priests have been robbed. One was shot. Their vehicles have been taken. The administrator of the Episcopal hospital at Cange was kidnapped and held for ransom. A leader in the nutrition program at Leogane was murdered in a politically-motivated killing. Hundreds of priests and lay workers associated with the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti live in daily fear of kidnapping, robbery and murder.

The suffering of the Haitian people grows each day for lack of food, medicine, health care, potable water, or any viable economic development.

As a church, we believe, we must speak out and enjoin others to do the same at this critical time in Haiti’s history. We are asking that you issue another public statement about conditions in Haiti and that Executive Council do the same in the form of a resolution. We would also hope to gain ecumenical support.

We will gladly work with the Washington Office of the Episcopal Church to develop a strategy to bring this issue before the leaders of the U.S. Congress.

Until civil order is restored in Haiti few, if any, mission efforts can proceed. Worse still, years of effort in building up the institutions of the Diocese, such as the schools and hospitals, clinics and agricultural programs, may be lost.

Conditions in Haiti bring us to our knees in prayer. We continue to pray for Haiti; but we also feel called to take action. We ask for your help.

Yours in Christ,

The Rt. Rev. Roger J. White, Chairman
Dr. Gretchen Berggren, Golden, CO
Gerald Harner, Lincoln, CA, Treasurer
Bill Harris, West Hartford, CT
The Rev. Carter Paden, Signal Mountain, TN
Kenneth Quigley, Mechanicsburg, PA , Secretary
Rita Redfield, Mt. Desert, ME
Dr. Stan Shaffer, Fairway, KS
The Rev. Willard Squire, Monteagle, TN, Vice President
Jack Vaughn, Dallas, TX
The Rev. Nicholas White, Charlotte, NC

Hey :)

2005-06-27T01:17:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to say HEY!, I miss y'all, and I'm going this year and nothing can stop me! :)

All my Love,

Whit

HSC Guest House PC

2005-06-23T13:15:00.000-05:00

One priority for mission participants is having the ability to stay in touch with friends and family back home. Our cell phones are not compatible, and satellite phones have met with limited success. The last time I was in the HSC guest house, there was just one PC, very old, and perhaps on its last leg. So, last year I initiated dialogue with my company to see if they would be willing to donate a PC for our Haiti mission. This is a big company, so it took a long time just to find the right people to talk to, and then to navigate the red tape. Well, I finally have good news: Yesterday, I received the donated computer to take to Haiti!
Transportation space is limited, so I specifically asked for a certain hp computer that is an extremely compact design. It is not the very latest, but it is a Pentium 4, USB ports, CD-RW, etc... suffice to say it will be a major upgrade from what is down there now. It is my hope this will greatly improve internet and email access for the teams visiting the HSC guest house.

Haiti travel warning

2005-06-11T10:11:00.000-05:00

June 10, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WMD recommends mission teams not travel to Haiti

LOUISVILLE, Ky.---Escalating violence in Haiti has prompted the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD) to advise congregations and middle governing bodies not to send volunteer mission groups to the Caribbean nation until further notice.
“As Haiti approaches its national elections, the country has experienced an upsurge in violence,” said Bill Simmons, chair of WMD’s Security Team. “WMD cannot encourage or facilitate travel to Haiti by any volunteer mission group. When it is determined that the situation has stabilized, WMD will revisit this decision.”
Human rights groups say that more than 600 people have been killed in Haiti since last October. The violence is attributed to warring gangs, who are either supporters or opponents of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. An interim government is now in charge of Haiti and a 7,400-member U.N. peacekeeping force is trying to keep order as the nation prepares for elections in October and November.
Haiti, which is located less than 700 miles south of Miami, receives scores of Presbyterian mission teams every year.
Meanwhile, some PC(USA) mission personnel in Haiti are being asked to return to the United States until the violence subsides.
Maria Arroyo, the PC(USA)’s area coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean, said WMD will continue to monitor the situation closely and will remain in conversation with mission personnel assigned to Haiti.

From Gary P. regarding the lady with the mass

2005-06-10T12:47:00.000-05:00

Dr Holt,I remembered this lady. She`s from Fayette area in Leogane. She was in our one mobil clinic we had in Fayette Area. It was with group from Fayette, Virginia guided by Dr Jim Wierman who actually encouraged her having the surgery. I was very happy to see the great job you guys have done in removing this mask from her. There is hope with for haiti. With all your efforts we can build a better generation and improve the situation a bit down in haiti.Thanks you all,Gary-ex- mobil clinic cooordinator/head translator @ ste-roix hospital
--Posted by Garyhaiti to Haiti 2006 at 6/10/2005 12:01:58 PM

2005-06-09T22:25:00.000-05:00

This lady had a huge mass on her cheek successfully removed on our 1993 trip by Dr. Sloane and Dr. Reeves. Amazing evidence of God's work!

2005-06-09T20:24:00.000-05:00

This is where we go, Leogane just west of Port Au Prince.

2005-06-09T20:22:00.000-05:00

Haiti Mission team February 2005

2005-06-09T14:38:00.000-05:00

Haiti 2003

Haiti 2006

2005-06-09T13:10:00.000-05:00

This is the blog for the FPC mission trip to Haiti. Enjoy!