Story

Hands and Feet Project Battles Haiti’s Orphan Crisis

May 23, 2016 | The Tennessean
By
Jamie McGee and Larry McCormack

Sheeven Joseph skateboards at the Hands and Feet Project children's home in Grand Goave, Haiti. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Sheeven Joseph, who lives at Hands and Feet Project, examines a piece of coral at the beach in Grand Goave, Haiti. One of the goals of The Hands and Feet Project vision is for Haitian teenagers and young adults to take visitors on activities such as snorkeling. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Egan Robenson lives at the Hands and Feet Project's children's home in Grand Goave. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Teenagers who live at the Hands and Feet Project's children's home swim at Taino Beach in Grand Goave. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Egan Robenson and Sheeven Joseph, who live at the Hands and Feet Project's children's home, swim at Taino Beach in Grand Goave. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Local adults work at Hands and Feet Project's workshop, weaving hats for the organization's Haiti Made brand. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Local women make leather products at the Hands and Feet Project's workshop in Grand Goave. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Local teenagers weave hats for the Haiti Made brand in the Hands and Feet workshop in Grand Goave. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Teenagers in Grand Goave work part-time at Hands and Feet Project's workshop, making woven hats. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Sean Moore, who leads Hands and Feet Project in Grand Goave, surveys the construction of a suite at the organization's the new boutique hotel and retreat center. The site is expected to be fully operable in 2018. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Mission Guest Village is a boutique hotel and retreat center built by Hands and Feet Project in Haiti. Its purpose is to help employ those graduating from its children home and others in the Grand Goave community. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

A man in Grand Goave, Haiti, carries goods through the street. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Michelle Meece, a missionary, who works in an operational capacity at Hands and Feet Project's children's village has a moment to love on the children in Grand Goave, Haiti. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Marvins, who is almost 2 years-old, rests in the arms of Hands and Feet Project co-founder Will McGinniss at the organization's children's home in Grand Goave, Haiti. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Children play at Taino Beach in Grand Goave, Haiti, as others sell fruit on the shore. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Men retrieve lobsters from a holding trap on Taino Beach that beachgoers later eat. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

A man sells plantains and fish at Taino Beach. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Hands and Feet directors Andrea McGinniss and Jennifer Moore eat lobster with plantains and slaw with their families on Taino Beach. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

A teenager rides on top of a truck on the way home from Taino Beach. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Hands and Feet Project is building a Mission Guest Village as a way to provide job opportunities for the teenagers and young adults graduating from its children's home. Seventeen-year-old Stevee Charles speaks with Hands and Feet co-founder Will McGinniss outside the building. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Hands and Feet co-founder Will McGinniss looks out over the grounds of the organization's new retreat center in Grand Goave, Haiti. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Hands and Feet Project directors Will and Andrea McGinniss at the Mission Guest Village in Grand Goave, Haiti. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Hands and Feet co-founder Will McGinniss listens as Joel Rezil, 18, shares his hopes for Haiti and ideas for his own future. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Hands and Feet Project co-founder Will McGinniss walks with older boys on their way to school. The two teenagers have moved into transitional homes from the Hands and Feet children's village. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Hands and Feet Project directors Andrea and Will McGinniss walk with older boys on their way to school. The two teenagers behind the McGinnisses have moved into transitional homes from the Hands and Feet children's village in Haiti. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Hands and Feet co-founder Will McGinniss stands with students at the gates of a school in Grand Goave, Haiti. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Sheeven Joseph, 13, who lives at Hands and Feet's children village, listens as class begins. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

Hands and Feet co-founder Will McGinniss stands with students at the gates of a school in Grand Goave, Haiti. Image by Larry McCormack. Haiti, 2016.

GRAND GOAVE, Haiti — In the orphanage where Sheeven Joseph lived as a young boy, 31 children slept on cardboard boxes.

They had little food to eat. The man who housed them received donations based on the number of children, but the money did not go toward their care, according to the organization that provides care for them today.

“When we got them they were very sad, very sick, very hungry,” said Andrea McGinniss, director of child care at Hands and Feet Project, The Franklin-based nonprofit that began working in orphan care in Haiti in 2005.

The same children now sleep in blanketed bunk beds, eat three meals a day and live under the care of four Haitian house mothers. Hands and Feet built a new site for the children in Grand Goave after local authorities stepped in eight years ago.

“I go to school,” said Joseph, 13. “I make good grades. I eat well. I’m comfortable.”

The Mission Guest Village project, which is expected to be fully built and operable in 2018, is Hands and Feet's latest effort to address the needs of Joseph and the nearly 110 children and teenagers living in their care. The children transitioning out of the homes will be able to earn incomes as guides for guests or fill other jobs created through the facility's operations. The vision is to help the children live independently as adults and to break the cycles of poverty their parents encountered.

Hands and Feet began with musicians of Christian group Audio Adrenaline in 2004, when they established their first children’s home in Jacmel, south of Grand Goave. More recently, they created a line of leather goods and woven hats, called Haiti Made, that employs about 35 individuals — both teenagers from their two homes and teens and adults from the local communities.

Of those children living at Hands and Feet Project’s homes, about 85 percent have a living parent. The problem is rooted in poverty. Parents, unable to provide adequate food, see no other option but to find alternative caregivers. As often as once a week, a parent asks if a child can live there, according to Hands and Feet directors.

“They see, OK, my kid is going to eat,” said McGinniss, who lives in Jacmel with her husband, Hands and Feet co-founder Will McGinniss, and three children. “My kid is going to have clothes. My kid’s going to go to school.”

Hands and Feet only accepts children after social services approves and connects families to resources that can help them get by.

“Every orphan care strategy has to start with a fight to keep families together,” said Mark Stuart, Hands and Feet co-founder. “We are putting as much effort into family preservation as our child care.”