Carolie’s New Start
“I know a place,” Carolie heard her neighbor say. “We are leaving now — I don’t want to die here.” Without looking back, 11-year-old Carolie and her family hopped in her neighbor’s car and fled Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as a gang descended, homes began to burn and shots rang out.
Hours later, they arrived in a town unknown to Carolie and her family but far from the violence. She had left everything behind — her bed, her clothes, her belongings and her friends — and the new reality started to set in.
“Our home was a place where laughter filled the air,” Carolie’s father, Anel, says. “The chaos of the outside felt so distant. Our daughters lived peacefully, enjoying the privacy of their own room.” But overnight, Anel’s job as a cabinetmaker was gone, and the family found themselves sheltering in a stranger’s spare bedroom.
Carolie is registered in Compassion’s program, so when her tutors learned about the family’s escape, they tracked her down and connected her to a Compassion-partnered church in her new town. Suddenly, Carolie and her family had a familiar network of support in an unfamiliar place.
Staff at the Compassion-partnered church were determined to not let this crisis derail the progress Carolie and her family had made in their journey out of poverty. They started by providing the family with emotional and psychological support, and then helped enroll Carolie and her sister in a new school. The family also received food baskets and support to start a new business, offering them a path to self-sufficiency. “With the center’s support, I’m finally able to cook a good meal for my children,” says Carolie’s mother with a smile on her face.
An estimated 15,500 Compassion-assisted children in Haiti are currently experiencing critically severe levels of gang violence and unrest. Your giving is a lifeline for churches in this country and around the world as they work to protect children from hunger, violence and hopelessness.