In Haiti, we have encountered situations in which we have never come across before.  For me, difficult situations.  All varying degrees of difficulty.

Stories

Here are some other stories I have read/heard recently from other Heartliners:

• A pregnant woman is being abused by her husband. She has no one to go live with and she understands that reporting him won’t accomplish anything that will result in improvements in her life. – Livesay
• Yesterday, I asked a worker how his wife was, he responded that her tooth was removed by a dentist a.k.a “someone that has pulled a tooth once before”.  She was bleeding a lot and in lot’s of pain. – Me
• A family of eight informs us that it is a ‘non-dinner night’. They eat dinner every other night. On Friday at four p.m. they know that their next meal will be Saturday night. They’re not fasting on purpose, they’re fasting because their family budget allows for meals to be made and consumed approximately every-other day. – Livesay
• Just sat and listened as two Haitian women talked about how God has healed their sicknesses in their lifetime. He is here. – Allison

One goal of Haitian Creations is to give women work so they can pull their families out of the “no-dinner-night”.

Empowing the women of this program to… support their kids, afford a place to live, say “No!” to abusive men, <insert a million more things>!

As we look to continue to grow the program.  A side-project of mine recently has been working with Haitian Creations (HC) and proposing a Point-Of-Sale and Inventory solution for sales from HC.  As I worked on this, it was important to remember the end goal.

I wanted to share a short clip from the full proposal to give a glimpse into what I have been up to recently besides the GH.  Also, to give myself a reminder as we go into this next week what this program means for these women.

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As you read this proposal, please consider the women at Haitian Creations. The goal is to empower them with knowledge and to share the good news with these ladies:

“My name is Joseph and I am 23 years old. I have 2 children who are 6 and 3 years old. I was living on the streets. Now, I am able to live in a home. I have worked at Haitian Creations for one year. This program allows me to pay for my children’s education. I am very thankful for Heartline giving me the opportunity to learn and work. One day I would like to study and be a nurse.” – Joseph Wideleine

“My name is Nehimie and I am 27 years old. It is difficult to find work and I am very excited to be able to learn and make purses. This is my first job and I have worked at Heartline for one year. I enjoy making purses and other products with my hands. One day I would like to be a clothing fashion designer.” – Nehimie Ulysse

Can we help more women like this? These are women that are working hard to bring themselves out of the oppressed lifestyle they are all too familiar with from before. When I visit the program I see them studying, writing down notes, working long hours from sunrise to sunset. The heart of Heartline is that we want to be diligent in doing everything we can to support these women.

Details

We support and help grow the program by marketing their creations to others in the U.S. We distribute their work to shops in Haiti, shops in the U.S., purse parties, and online. This isn’t anything new. We are doing this today. In fact, we are sending purses, beads, and tin out to more places than we ever have! There are more purse parties, more shops involved in selling, and more people buying through the women’s center and guest house than in the past. By God’s grace, Haitian Creations is growing. We are here to be advocates for these women and want to continue to support them.

“As small businesses mature into medium-sized businesses, they often expand into multiple locations. This, plus more employees and more customer orders, makes the task of inventory management more complex.” (from Inventory System Software – L).

Example Situation

Let’s say we have a visitor, Jane. She comes to Haiti and sees Haitian Creations. She gets wicked excited to have a purse party back in the states. Jane takes a number of purses home… Read more.

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Haitian Creations Summit

This next week Heartline will be hosting a Haitian Creations Summit which will be tossing around ideas and making decisions to continue moving ahead with improving the program.

The above proposal is only a tiny-little section of this next week.  We have other challenges as we look to keep the beautiful beads but yet figure out how to increase production.

There is quite a bit of wait time involved in the process of bead making. ”And when its over-cast for a few days, beads don’t dry and our supply slows way down.” Allison continues,

“We’ve done experiments trying to dry the beads faster. We’ve tried the oven, we’ve tried simulating a kiln, we’ve tried changing the type of varnish we use. We’re not happy with anything other than our slow beads.

So we need more ladies! Which is great, right? More beaders means a few things. It means we need to offer more classes. More classes means more teachers. Teachers have to come from within our program because we’re the only people making fabric beads in Haiti. That means we lose a great deal of her production, because she is now teaching. We’ve discussed doing one large class but there is the issue of space to consider.” (Full article on Allison’s Blog)

Luckily, we have lots of heads coming together next week to work out problems mentioned above.  Thank goodness they are much smarter then me!  I do look forward to bringing ideas to the table and helping because I know who it is for.

Please pray with us for this next week’s summit!