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BRIANA 7 January 2010 No. I didn't forget how to spell our granddaughter's name. Yesterday on Facebook there was a plea from Compassion International about the plight of children in Haiti and how they sorely need sponsors for that country. The Corail Child Development Center in Haiti has an urgent need for child sponsors because of the large number of unsponsored children in this project. Their hope is to find sponsors for 50 children in this project. I already sponsor two children, one in Brasil and one in India and I had decided months ago that two was my financial limit. I also am a correspondence sponsor for Fred in the Philippines, because his financial sponsor doesn't write to him and contact with a sponsor seems to be so important to these children. But I decided to look at the children in Haiti who need sponsors and of course they all tug at your heart strings. I thought I'd see if there was any one of them who called out to me. There were three pages of children, in ages ranging from 3 to 7 and while I ached to help each and every one of them, none of them leaped off the page and into my heart. Until I came to page 3.
"In her home, Briana helps by washing clothes and cleaning. She
lives with her father and her mother. Her father is sometimes employed as a laborer and
her mother is sometimes employed as a seller in the market. There are 3 children in the
family. But look at that face. She has been waiting more than six months for a sponsor and ... her name is Briana of all things. Of course I had to sponsor her. Briana lives in the community of Petite-Anse
(Cap-Haitien), home to approximately 85,000 residents. Typical houses are constructed of
cement floors, brick walls and tin roofs. The regional diet consists of maize, beans,
chicken, fish, cassava, rice, goat and vegetables. Compassion is working to fight the "restavčk curse" in Haiti. Restavčk is a Creole word for a Haitian child who stays with and works for another family. A restavčk child can be a boy or a girl who is given away by a poor family in order to survive. Frequently, the restavčks most basic rights to health and education are denied. Of these children, 65 percent are girls between age 6 and 14. They are forced to work long hours under harsh conditions, and are subject to mistreatment, including sexual abuse. The restavčk child is the first person to wake up in the morning and the last one to go to bed, sometimes after 14 hours of work that consists of, among other chores, carrying water, washing clothes, taking the owners children to school, doing errands, and cleaning the home. The restavčk child is often beaten for the simplest mistakes. Laws against child abuse exist in Haiti, but unfortunately they are seldom enforced as childrens rights dont have a high a priority. The number of restavčk children reported nationally is between 250,000 and 300,000, and this domestic phenomenon is due to several reasons. The main reason is parents low income. A lack of economic resources forces parents from remote areas to place their children with families in urban areas with the hope that the child will have a better future. If the restavčk doesnt find a better future by age 17, the child often takes his or her independence from the owner to join a street gang or to become a prostitute. The owner will then look for a younger child, and the infernal circle continues.
Very few of us will ever make sweeping changes in the world, but each
of us has the ability to make life better for one other person. I'm looking forward
to getting to know Briana as she grows up. |
PHOTO OF THE DAY Sheila and Lizzie guard the house every day.
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