A couple months ago I saw an article in the paper about a group of people in Homer who were putting together a group of families to take in medical evacuees from Haiti for a few months while the children recuperated from their surgeries. I asked my husband and kids, and we all agreed that we wanted to volunteer to be a host family. It was a pretty huge step, but we have all been firm that this is what we want to do.
The uncertainty has been great. It was said it might be anywhere from a few weeks to many months before we would get children placed with the group of families in Homer. Nearly weekly meetings have had speakers discussing what it is like hosting children from other countries, the application process, updates from Homer volunteer pilot to Haiti, Stephanie Anderson, some basic French lessons and more. We have solicited for airline miles to fly the children up here, sought donations for medical care and clothing, contacted the local Catholic church (as most Haiti children are Catholic), alerted the schools and organized French or Creole speakers to provide translation for children and families.
It is exciting to consider having a group of 10-20 Haiti children in Homer--a community of them, so to speak. It is a neat project and it is overwhelming to see how many people want to make a concrete difference in the lives of a group Haiti children.
If you are interesting in reading more about this group, check out our website at http://www.homerhelpinghaiti.ai446.org/ ,
our blog at http://homerhelpinghaiti.wordpress.com/,
or a recent article in the Homer News at http://homernews.com/stories/040710/news_6_003.shtml.
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