Haiti Helping Hand

Joshua Anderson isn’t regretting his decision to sell everything and give up his career to help Haiti. The Colorado Springs man is part of an organization called Respire Haiti. The small organization is standing tall in a small community 20 miles away from Haiti’s capitol city of Port Au Prince.

Respire Haiti has already built a school for first through sixth graders. It’s in the process of building a four classroom kindergarten building and a wall around the small community. Joshua Anderson says Respire Haiti isn’t giving the people who live there a hand out. It’s giving resident a hands up. Adults in the community also help build the structures which in turn helps educate them on building structures that are quake resistant. Haiti’s massive quake in 2010 leveled 80 percent of the buildings, in the small community that he and the organization are focusing on for aid.

Anderson also tell me about the hundreds of thousands of domestic slaves called Resteveks. They are children under the age of 16 who are sold by their parents or others into domestic slavery. They are abused, modern day Cinderellas. Anderson tells me the people in power to change the situation are in many cases, part of the problem because they also own these slaves. The children are usually liberated at 16. However, by that time they are undereducated or have virtually no education to help them in the years ahead. Anderson’s organization helps the more than 75 percent of the children in the Haitian community it services, who are former Restaveks.

Anderson said, “It’s a blessing to be a part of something bigger thatn yourself and it was something I always wanted to experience. I’m incredibly grateful to be part of it.”

If you’d like more information on this hands up not hand out organization, go to the front page of KRDO.com and look under Links We Mentioned.