Mission of Love
SF seniors play a part in building an orphanage
in Haiti that’s been six years in the making.
BY PAUL GLASSER
A
group of 13 volunteers will soon depart for
a mission trip to Haiti where they will help
build an open-air school for orphans and
organize a soccer camp.
The Yahve-Jire Children’s Foundation
organized the trip, which will depart on July 2
and return on July 8. The organization’s name
means “God provides,” and the foundation
supports about 25 children who were orphaned
or abandoned by their parents. The mission trip
includes two seniors from South Fayette High School.
The foundation was organized as a 501c3 nonprofit in 2013 but Dan
Raeder, of Upper St. Clair and president of Yahve-Jire, says he and several
other volunteers first began working in Haiti on an informal basis in 2011.
Raeder and four others went to Haiti to help rebuild in the wake of 2010
earthquake which killed 200,000 Haitians and left more than 1.5 million
homeless.
Raeder and the other volunteers began working with an orphanage a few
miles outside of the capital, Port au Prince, which housed about 20 children
in a building with three rooms and one bathroom. The earthquake had
damaged the orphanage and Raeder and the other volunteers wanted to
construct a new building to replace it. A local man named Chedlin Justinvil
runs the orphanage and had purchased about 4 acres of land shortly before
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the earthquake devastated Haiti. In 2011, Raeder
and the other volunteers carried cement blocks in
100-degree heat in order to build a wall around the
new location.
Construction of the new orphanage was recently
completed and it includes dormitories, a kitchen,
and bathrooms. The dormitories are dome-like
structures that are more resistant to earthquakes,
Raeder says. The upcoming mission trip will
build an open-air school so that the children can
continue their education. They had previously been attending a school
in Port au Prince that is only eight miles away. However, the roads are in
poor condition and the journey could take several hours, so Justinvil and
the foundation’s board members decided to build an open-air classroom
adjacent to the orphanage.
The mission trip will also host a soccer camp for the orphanage as well as
other local children. Previously, the South Fayette High School soccer team
donated uniforms, cleats and shin guards. The soccer camp will include drills
and a scrimmage between the Haiti children and the mission trip volunteers.
“It gives them a chance to be normal kids,” Raeder says.
For several years, the foundation has sent another mission trip in the
spring, which provides educational and medical services. An oral surgeon
from Mt. Lebanon and several residents from Allegheny General Hospital