New houses. New hope.

In Ganthier and Boen, Haiti, CWS leads an ACT Alliance program to improve living conditions for families by increasing access to dignified, safe housing and improved access to clean water and sanitation facilities. This program started in 2011 to help families who were living in camps following the devastating earthquake in 2010.

Fedline Fleuristal and her family found new hope as they helped build their new home:

“We have 7 people in the household; my husband and me, our four children, and a child of my sister. Our children are at primary and secondary school, two of them in Boen, one in Croix-desBouquets and the oldest one in Port-au-Prince. He comes home every weekend and already finished secondary school, but there is no money to pay for university, so now he is following a course studying French. My husband is a farmer, planting sweet potatoes, sorghum and other crops. I buy and sell sweet potatoes and plantains at the market of Croix-des-Bouquets.

The masons worked well at our house. They respected time, came early and left late, working hard. I prepared food for them, carried water, helped with manual labor, carried mortar. My husband also helped.  We used to rent a house in Delmas, but it fell down during the earthquake and then we came to Boen, where I am from. We started to rent a house in Boen, but now this new house was built on my mother’s land. Our oldest son got hurt in the earthquake when trying to run out of the house, with blocks falling on his legs and forehead.  

Today I will pray with my group before moving into the house. We did not have this hope, but God gave us a house. I am used to getting a lot of disillusions, but this shows what God can do. I like the house a lot, the way it was built.” 

Yves Charles, a beneficiary in Boen, had a hard time believing that his new house was real:

“We used to have a mud-and-stick house. We have 8 children. When they called me, I still couldn’t believe we were going to get a house. It was only when I saw the engineer come to mark the foundation of the house that I started to believe.

We are very satisfied and the construction went well. The engineer gave us time and we worked with the technicians as if we were a family. Other people also came to give us a hand. I went to get cement, rebar, tin roof and wood at the warehouse and helped during the construction.

I am a farmer. Depending on the season I plant corn, sorghum, beans, beets, and onions. My wife sells at the market of Kwabosal. What they gave us is not something little; it is big. We don’t know when we would be able to do this ourselves.”

Roserne Fils-Aime lives in a new house in nearby Ganthier:

“Before January 12, 2010, my husband and I were living with our children in a rented house, but the house got destroyed in the earthquake. Since we had no money to rent another one, we had to live in the camp. Although the circumstances were difficult, we lived with hope that one day God would help us get out of the camp. This has now been accomplished and I feel happy to have a house where I can live in peace and quiet with my family. I give thanks to God and the organizations and hope the program will continue so that many more people can benefit.”