Chidelande’s family lives in this makeshift home in Haiti’s Central Plateau.
Families in Haiti are in crisis. More than 1.4 million people have been forced to flee Haiti’s capital due to gang violence and unrest. The illiteracy rate is high, malnutrition is rampant, and steady, well-paying employment is difficult to obtain. Extreme poverty leaves families living in perilous conditions, forces children to forfeit their education, and prevents households from accessing the food they need to stay strong. These barriers can cause harm that lasts for generations, creating a cycle of hopelessness and poor health that is difficult to escape.
Cross Catholic Outreach and our ministry partners aim to address the pressing needs facing Haiti’s most vulnerable populations by providing safe housing, quality education, nutritious food and much more. Outreaches will prioritize children and their families, pregnant and nursing mothers, those affected by illness or disabilities, and elderly adults.
Your compassion and support will help transform futures and empower the Church in Haiti to be an instrument of peace for our Haitian brothers and sisters.
Your support will help radiate the Lord’s peace throughout Haiti and set families on the path toward a more secure future. While $17,681 will build an entire home for a family in need, any gift amount will help!
When you give to the Haiti Relief Fund, you will support 19 critically important projects carried out by nine ministry partners throughout Haiti. These projects will provide support for housing, food and nutrition, agriculture, microenterprise, and water and health. Students are the bright future of Haiti, poised to influence the professional, political and moral culture throughout the nation. This is why the Haiti Relief Fund has a strong focus on education.
Your generous support will help:
Help build 56 stormproof concrete-block homes, at an average cost of $17,681 each, to benefit 458 children and adults who currently live in dangerous makeshift dwellings.
Provide a quality education for 3,280 students from preschool through university whose families could not otherwise afford school expenses.
Fill stomachs with approximately 2.2 million protein-rich Vitafood meals, fuel monthly food distributions to 250 needy families, and provide meals and support for 30 elderly people at an adult daycare center.
We provide hungry children and families with a lifeline in the form of Vitafood: prepackaged meals specially formulated to support growing children. These meals contain a rice or potato base, a protein, and key vitamins. In Haiti, Vitafood is a critical support for struggling families, pulling them back from the brink of malnutrition, stunting and wasting.
Because we secure donations of ingredients and rely on volunteers to help pack Vitafood, your gift mainly covers shipping costs — meaning every dollar has three times the impact it would have in the marketplace!
Heeding the cry of the poor, our goal is to ship approximately 2.2 million nourishing Vitafood meals to Haiti this year. We will also provide dry goods such as beans, cooking oil and soap to 250 of the poorest families through the Kobonal Haiti Mission and feed and care for 30 seniors at the St. Joseph Day Center in Jacmel.
Each one-cup serving of cooked Vitafood is nutrient-dense and ideal for families at risk of malnutrition. While the nutritional content varies slightly between sources, here are just some of the benefits provided by a single serving of a rice-based Vitafood meal (based on a 2,000-calorie diet):
Folate
80% daily value. Prevents serious birth defects and aids heart health.
Iron
40% daily value. Supports healthy red blood cells and improves energy.
Protein
12 grams. Supports muscle and bone health and the immune system.
Vitamin B12
60% daily value. Boosts heart health and aids in the production of red blood cells.
Vitamin C
60% daily value. Boosts the immune system, aids in wound healing, and improves iron absorption.
Vitamin D
40% daily value. Supports bone health, the immune system, muscles and nerves.
Zinc
30% daily value. Aids the immune system and supports skin and eye health.
Cross Catholic Outreach is collaborating with a trusted network of Catholic priests, religious sisters and lay missionaries who share our vision and heart for lifting up the poor in Christ’s holy name.
This congregation began its mission in Haiti in 1982 to accompany and protect the poor. The sisters operate the Marie Louise Bayle Center in the northeastern town of Ouanaminthe, where children attend a Catholic preschool and primary school and receive healthy meals to nourish their growing minds and bodies.
The Bethsaide Foundation was launched in 2005 by Nirva Desdunes, a Catholic woman with a heart for those in need. Native to Haiti, Nirva was heartbroken by the intense suffering her neighbors faced, especially uneducated children and seniors who were alone, afraid and undernourished.
She launched St. Joseph’s Training School in response to that call, and that faith-filled ministry now provides impoverished youth in Jacmel with access to sound primary education, vocational training and joy-filled faith formation. Other projects include efforts to build homes for families in Jacmel and the St. Joseph Day Center, which feeds and cares for elderly adults.
Founded in 1986 in partnership with St. Andre Chapel, the BND operates in the Centre Department, a landlocked region along Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic. Its projects include building homes for vulnerable families and empowering rural women through a farming program in the communities of Bassin-Cave and Bas-Selpêtre.
Dr. Bette Gebrian founded GAHDA more than four decades ago out of an unwavering commitment to serving the poor in Jérémie, the capital city of the Grand’Anse department. Today, the lay ministry provides free breast cancer education, health assessments and additional medical services for thousands of women who would otherwise go without them.
Since its founding in 1996, HELP has supported hundreds of disadvantaged students by providing scholarships to attend the University of Notre Dame in Haiti, the country’s only Catholic university. HELP graduates work in high-paying fields such as healthcare, computer science, law, accounting and engineering. Students also participate in internships, leadership education, community service and workforce-readiness training to prepare them for a bright future.
Nearly 40 years ago, a Louisiana priest from the Society of the Most Holy Trinity founded the Kobonal Haiti Mission in an area known for extreme spiritual and material poverty. At the time, small villages in Haiti’s Central Plateau were plagued by Vodou, disease, broken families and 100% unemployment. Most people could not read or write, and children were dying from diarrhea because they drank unsafe water and had little to eat.
The mission’s first outreach was a small Catholic school serving 50 students. Since then, the Lord has moved through the mission to offer an array of transformative programs ranging from housing and food to agriculture and microenterprise.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Haiti has the highest prevalence of HIV in the Caribbean. Since 1994, this nongovernmental organization has cared for orphans affected by HIV/AIDS. Due to the violence in Port-au-Prince, Overture International took formal custody of the children and placed them with foster families outside the capital city. Families receive regular supervision, training and home visits to equip them to care for specialized needs.
This lay ministry has served Haiti’s poor since 2016. In recent years, it has been focused on strengthening rural communities with everything from building schools to obtaining food for distribution. Among its many efforts is a wonderful construction project in the Tiburon area of the country. Working with a local mayor and a parish pastor, Overture International has developed a small housing community for poor families that includes a school, sanitation and a relief shelter that houses hurricane and food supplies. This project has the added benefit of providing business training to local construction crews.
Since 1995, the Sisters of St. John the Evangelist, often known as Juanistas, have provided vital education, healthcare and other relief to the most vulnerable communities in Haiti. In Ouanaminthe, the sisters operate the St. Teresa Vocational School, which offers classes in sewing, candle-making, music and comprehensive basic health training. These devoted sisters also serve impoverished families by providing scholarships for young children and nourishing anyone in need through their soup kitchen outreach.
Pierre attends the Kobonal Mission School and is in the eighth grade. His father is a teacher, his mother is a homemaker and both work hard to maintain their small farm. Pierre would like to be an engineer, but most of all, he wants his parents to be proud of him at his graduation, so he works hard in school.
Pierre’s family attends the Kobonal Mission Church. His favorite Bible verse is Psalm 3:5, which says, “I lie down and sleep; I wake again, for the Lord sustains me.” Why is that his favorite? He said, “Because before sleeping, I repeat this verse. It gives me strength.”
Three of our ministry partners have cost-effective plans to build 56 homes for the neediest families in the communities they serve. Each concrete-block home will include a solid cement foundation, a galvanized steel roof, a solar lighting system and an outdoor latrine.
A home costs $17,681, but donations of any amount will help bless a family with a new, safe home. Local Haitian construction crews will perform the bulk of the work, and families will assist with tasks such as painting and mixing cement, giving them the dignity of contributing to their new homes.
New homes vary slightly by diocese, but all include:
Kobonal homes have a reputation for being a model of quality and efficiency — in fact, the mission’s staff trains other Haitian ministries on its homebuilding process!
In 2005, when Cross Catholic Outreach began supporting the Kobonal housing project, it would take 20 days for crews to build a single home. Today, the mission’s experienced construction crew has cut the entire process down to just five days from start to finish!
DAY 1: The cement foundation is poured.
DAY 2: Masons build walls and coat them with plaster.
DAY 3: Carpenters frame the roof and install doors and windows.
DAY 4: Carpentry work continues.
DAY 5: The roof and solar panel are installed and the exterior is painted.
The BND and St. Andre Chapel’s rural women’s farming project will give 315 deeply impoverished women the tools, training and support to operate market gardens and raise livestock.
The Kobonal Haiti Mission will issue low-interest microloans to 86 hardworking men and women who are prepared to either launch a new business or grow an existing one.
Your gift will fund salaries for 11 healthcare workers to perform critical health checks through GAHDA’s women’s health project and allow the Kobonal Haiti Mission to drill three wells, bringing safe, clean water to 2,913 people in Colladère, Andra and Rhode II.
Students at the Kobonal Mission School and other Catholic schools are Haiti’s future.
Haiti faces incredible challenges. Still, we know that no obstacle is too great for God to overcome — and that every blessing you share has the power to restore hope and change someone’s life trajectory. That is exactly what is possible through the Kobonal Haiti Mission and other ministries across Haiti where hardworking priests, sisters and lay leaders need and deserve our unfettered support.
Use it for reflections and notes to grow in your spiritual life. You’ll also receive a prayer request form to mail back so that we can pray for your needs. In effect, this creates a spiritual bridge to connect you to our sisters and brothers in Christ in the developing world!
Cross Mission Partners also receive a semiannual Mission Update with news, insights and information about the good work and accomplishments made possible by your support.
Every dollar helps us bless the least of our brothers and sisters throughout Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Mexico & Central America and South America.
Thank You for Your Special Commitment to Serving the Poor!
It’s easy to shop through the Cross Catholic Outreach Project Catalog. Simply browse the categories and choose an item within your budget and close to your heart, such as Anti-Trafficking and Girls’ Rescue or Most Urgent Needs. Select and sponsor one or more of these gifts, and you’ll make a meaningful impact on the life of a needy child or family. It’s that simple!
Absolutely! Once you select your items, you’ll be given the option of sending an e-card or printing a customizable certificate. This is a meaningful way to share Christ’s love with others while also honoring friends and family.
We are a Catholic ministry that partners with bishops, priests, religious and lay workers to provide Food, Water & Health, Housing, Kids & Education, Women & Girls, Disaster Relief, Farming & Loans opportunities and the love of our Lord Jesus Christ to the poor and vulnerable in over 30 countries around the world.
Donations from this campaign will be used to cover any expenditures for this project incurred through June 30, 2027, the close of our ministry’s fiscal year. In the event that more funds are raised than needed to fully fund the project, the excess funds, if any, will be used to meet the most urgent needs of the ministry.
