RYAN EPPS CHILDREN'S HOME offers hope for abandoned children in Haiti, the poorest country of the western hemisphere—a place where the average lifespan is only 50. Children often suffer from starvation and disease and are frequently abandoned.
Started in 2007, this orphanage offers hope by giving these children a safe haven and a strong Christian foundation. It will give a hand up-- not a hand out, and it will provide the children with the opportunity to take charge of their lives. The Ryan Epps Home for Children was named in memory of Ryan Epps, a much-loved member of our youth group.
To help consider educational sponsorship of a child by providing a child with tuition, school uniform, and books. Or you may even consider whole sponsorship of a child, which includes room, board, and clothing as well. Call Helen Little at 919-553-7631 for more information.
New home, new beginning: Haitian children move out of tents.
• 08.25.2010 |
Editor Rick Mercier traveled to Haiti Aug. 18-22. Look for continuing coverage in the next two weeks’ editions of The Clayton News-Star. NEXT WEEK: A vision for the future
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MICHAUD, Haiti – Orlane Michel’s life has undergone a great transformation in the past few weeks.
From the time that the catastrophic earthquake struck near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12 until last month, the 8-year-old girl had been homeless. Her mother, who also has three sons, thought she could live anywhere with the boys, but a girl was more vulnerable.
So she brought Orlane from Tabarre, a northeastern suburb of the Haitian capital, to nearby Cazeau, where the girl became the newest child to be taken in by the Ryan Epps Home for Children, a project started by Clayton’s Horne Memorial United Methodist Church in 2007.
“Her mother wanted to find a good home for her,” explained Helen Little, a founding member of the home’s board of directors, during her 49th mission trip to Haiti last week.
Orlane, wearing a bright new dress Little had brought for her, did not look like a child who had suffered the horrors of a deadly natural disaster followed by months of homelessness.
She laughed and played with her new “family” members at the home – four other girls and five boys ranging in age from 5 to 9 who either were orphans or, like Orlane, had parents who could not care for them.
The young girl said she enjoyed playing with her new brothers and sisters and also going to church. She looked forward to the prospect of attending school soon. But most of all, Orlane said, she liked having her own bed to sleep in.
Last week, a United Methodist Volunteers in Mission team of 10 members – including Little and a reporter from The Clayton News-Star – came to the Ryan Epps Home’s new location in the community of Michaud, also a northeastern suburb of Port-au-Prince, to do electrical work on the new prefabricated school/church building where the children, the home’s director and family and two caretakers will live until a second building can be constructed adjacent to the existing one later this year.
When the team arrived last Wednesday, it was only the children’s fourth day in the 4,500-square-foot building, which was erected in April by another mission team but did not have its plumbing, septic system, outdoor kitchen and toilet and walkway around the exterior of the structure until more recently.
Before moving to Michaud, the children had been living in tents in Cazeau for more than seven months since the quake.
The children were rambunctious and happy to see Little and Al and Valerie Carpenter of Clayton, also members of the home’s board of directors. They swarmed the visitors when they pulled out sweets and presents.
The next day, Little sat in the sweltering church sanctuary at one end of the new building assembling ceiling fans that were being installed by other mission team members.
The 79-year-old also eyed the children as they raced in and out of the sanctuary. She pointed to 6-year-old Boiveline Jean.
“She’ll be a good citizen of this country,” Little said. “She’s going to be upright and have good morals. She’ll stand up for her rights. I think she’s going to be able to handle herself.”
The purpose of the home is not to hold the children until they are adopted by foreign families but to groom them to be future leaders in Haitian society. That includes providing them not only with food and shelter but also a quality education with a Christian grounding.
Little said building a better Haiti will take time, but the focus has to be on the nation’s children.
“It won’t happen overnight. Two generations from now it will be better. When these children grow up, they will have lived a better life than that child up there on the corner …,” she said. “They will expect better. Their lifestyle will demand better. And that’s where it’s got to be. It has to start with the children. And we have to equip them with an education so it’s attainable.”
Plans for the new compound in Michaud had already been in the works when the temblor struck, but the disaster – and the children’s subsequent homelessness – made Horne members expedite construction of the first building.
Now the children again have a roof over their heads, and school starts for them next month at the home. Next year, the home’s director, Yvon Pierre, hopes to open the school up to other children living in the hardscrabble Michaud community.
Pierre would also like to take in two more children who are now living in tents on the grounds of a hotel in the nearby town of Croix-des-Bouquets.
But Horne needs to find money to make Pierre’s plans possible.
“That [growth] doesn’t depend on me. That depends on the financial [situation],” he said.
Horne also needs to raise tens of thousands of dollars to complete the second building. A mission team is scheduled to travel to Michaud in mid-November to erect the shell of the prefabricated structure.
Little is optimistic that the home will find the support it needs in ways that cannot be anticipated.
“That’s how things happen – unexpectedly. You never know where it’s going to come from,” she said.
For more information about the Ryan Epps Home for Children, visit www.ryaneppshome.com and join the home on Facebook.
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"Our Dreams and God's Vision: Helen Little's Story"
by Daphne Key
Helen Little, who grew up “right down Highway 70 where they sell collards,” wanted to be a teacher when she was young. However, there wasn't enough money for the Wilson's Mills' valedictorian to go to Greensboro to what was then the Woman's College. So she got married, had three children, and ended up working at North Carolina State University. Like many folks, Helen had dreams that didn't materialize.
But for people of faith, God has plans for their lives that exceed their dreams. Helen Little is a woman didn't get to teach school; instead, God used her to start seven schools and an orphanage in Haiti. God needed the feisty and determined woman from Clayton to go to Haiti and become an educator—in a way that Helen had not dreamed. During the last twenty years, Helen has been to Haiti forty-one times—a far cry from Clayton, North Carolina.
After Helen married, she and her husband joined Horne Memorial United Methodist Church—a place where she felt loved and accepted. And then her beloved husband died in December, 1983, and she knew that God had brought her to Horne so that she would have a “family” after his death.
In January, 1984, Helen saw a slide presentation on missions in Haiti, and she instantly knew that she wanted to travel and work there. However, she had used all of her work leave and financial resources to care for her husband during his illness. Determined, she saved her money, and two years later made her first trip to Haiti. Helen said, “I looked at the people, and I saw that I had so much and that they had so little. And then I saw the children with their mothers in the medical clinics. They weren't in school. I knew without schools, there was no chance for a better life for them.”
So Helen helped raise money for schools. The first school, the Bonnette School, is made of cement blocks. It boasts eight rooms and a tin roof. Accessible by a winding dirt road, another two-roomed school, Delmas, sits atop a hill overlooking Port-au-Prince. Gallette Chambon is a school whose walls are made of plaited palms, for wood is scarce. Currently, Helen is raising money for Fond-doux School. It has walls, but no roof yet.
Once Helen visited and saw women carrying infants over a mile to get water from the river. She said, “I am going home and turn on a faucet. These people need a well.” Helen, who grew up on a farm, understood the problem. She raised the money to dig a well in the Gallette Chambou community.
The orphanage she helped start, The Ryan Epps Home for Children in Haiti, is home to ten children. It is supported in large part by Horne Memorial United Methodist Church, but it also needs additional financial support.
Helen Little didn't get to be a teacher, and she didn't get to go to college. And she cherishes the acceptance letter she got from Woman's College years ago. But if Helen Little had gone to college and taught in Clayton, she might not have gone to Haiti and helped build seven schools and an orphanage—and had wells dug.
Sometimes God has mighty big plans for folks like Helen Little—plans that people don't understand at the time disappointment comes. What Helen Little needs now is for people to help continue the good work she started and perhaps fulfill God's purpose for their lives—bigger dreams than they ever imagined.
For more information on the Haiti schools and the Ryan Epps Childten's Home in Haiti, call Horne Memorial United Church at 919-553-6464.
