Proudly introducing Elda

From Emily

Summer nights in Gonaives are some of the best. The sun has gone down and taken the heat away with it. Neighbors gather on their balconies and doorsteps to visit long into the night. When I spent my summer in Haiti in 2013, I often passed my evenings doing just this: sitting outside in the cool night air talking with Elda and whatever neighbor women happened to be over at the time. They would braid each other’s hair and chatter on and I would mostly listen.

One summer’s night, Elda and I got to talking about her dream of starting a sewing workshop to teach young women how to sew. We had been talking about how most of the mothers in our feeding program don’t seem to have a good way to make money for themselves and support their children whose fathers have long since made themselves scarce. And she told me about how she had once poured herself into running a small sewing workshop on the outskirts of town. It was well-attended and got off to a good start, but as with so many well-begun projects in Haiti, the funding eventually dried up and she had no choice but to let it die.

“If only I could start something like that for the women here,” she said. “It would make such a difference for them.”

Several weeks later, I once again found myself enjoying relaxed conversation in the cool darkness, this time with a recent graduate from San Diego’s fashion institute who had come to spend a week helping us build a fence around our garden. When I asked her about her hopes for the future, Angeline told me about her dream of somehow using her degree for something more than simply pandering to the world’s vanities.

It all clicked. Elda dreamed of starting a sewing workshop. Angeline dreamed of designing clothes for a cause. The mothers of the kids in our program needed a source of income. There was a growing market for ethically-sourced clothing in the US. And so the idea for a workshop in our little community was birthed.

Now, a year and a half later, I am proud to present Elda, our brand-new clothing brand. Born of a dream deferred for decades, made by hands eager to learn, each product we have for sale is a victory. It’s nearly a month’s wages for the woman who made it. It’s 30 meals for children in our feeding program. It’s hours spent designing patterns and trying to teach ourselves accounting. It’s long, hot mornings spent wrestling with temperamental machines and flaky electricity.

Not a single part of this was easy but we’re proud of where we are. We’re proud of Elda, our company’s namesake, who held onto her dream and has been faithful to see it through. We’re proud of the women who worked tirelessly to learn their craft and perfect it. And we’re proud of the skirts we have to show for it all.

We only have as many skirts as the women have been able to make so far—less than 100 in all—so order yours now and join us in coming alongside Elda and the women she mentors as we work towards our mission of empowering Haitians with skills to grow their communities spiritually, physically and intellectually.

Let there be skirts!

It was still dark and cool as I waved goodbye to the team Saturday morning. The boys in the orphanage crowded onto the balcony to see them load up into Pastor Maula’s truck and take off on their 24-hour journey home. We were all sad to see them go; no more late-night dance parties, no more nail painting, no more hair-braiding, no more wrestling—and no more sewing workshop training.

They left with 14 beautiful completed skirts in hand, proof that the women could sew them. But the true question remained: can they sew them without their teachers to help them along? It was the answer to that crucial question, not the number of completed skirts to date, that would determine whether the last two weeks would actually mean anything.

Elda had set up a work schedule with six women working each day, and after a weekend of rest for us all, the first group arrived this morning at 9. I was admittedly nervous. If anything were to go wrong or if they were unsure of any part of the process, they would be on their own. A sewing novice myself, I knew I could offer them little more than a discouraged shrug in answer to any of their questions. Angeline and Amanda were, by this time, more than 1,000 miles away in San Diego. This was the moment of truth: had the teaching stuck? Had we truly created something that could endure without us or had we merely given these women something to do for the last two weeks?

I stood off to the side of the room as the women trickled in. They wished me a cheerful good morning, each grabbed a bundle of skirt pieces and without further ado, got straight to work pinning pleats and ironing interfacing. When one woman was making her pleats uneven, another stopped her and explained how to use the notches in the skirt pieces to make the pleats correctly. When one woman couldn’t figure out how to thread her machine, another came along and did it for her. They worked at different paces, using different techniques, but all around me, these women were putting skirts together. On their own.

By noon when it was time for them to go home, most of them had nearly completely their skirts, doing in three hours what had taken them two weeks to accomplish before. I did nothing but sit and watch– and occasionally squeal with delight.

This workshop can happen. It can really work. Long after all the white people have packed up and left, these 30 women will continue to sew skirts to earn an income for themselves and bring in revenue to sustain our feeding program. Our labor over the last two weeks hasn’t been in vain. I say—let there be skirts!

 P.S. Pictures to come! 

Our garden

Back to Emily writing

If you load up in Pastor Maula’s truck (and get it started), take Avenue des Dattes to the outskirts of town, hang a left at the Total gas station and take the bumpy, pot-hole ridden road about two miles (past the big billboard advertising an energy drink and the Seventh Day Adventists Temple), you’ll get to our garden. It wasn’t always accessible by car; it used to be we had to walk about a quarter mile from the road on an overgrown dirt path to get to it. But Pastor Maula’s truck, a resilient little thing, has slowly packed down the thick brush and dirt over the course of the last year so that we can drive right up to it (after carefully fording a small ravine which fills with water when it rains. I’m telling you, this truck is a wonder).

When I first set foot on this land three years ago, it looked more like a jungle than a garden. Waist-high weeds were thriving under the shade of ancient mango and papaya trees. Only a shared understanding separated our land from our neighbors’—but wandering cows and goats did not share this understanding and grazed liberally on our property. But Pastor Maula had a dream of turning this mess into a garden in which he could grow his own food to supply the feeding program so I asked how I could help.

The first thing he said he needed was a fence—and not a shabby little thing made of sticks and leaves—a proper fence with proper concrete fence posts and barbed wire. So we brought in a team last summer to get started making fence posts. The next thing he needed was help cultivating the land. Neither he nor I knew a thing about farming really, though we both come from farming ancestry. But through one of our donors, I came in touch with a non-profit called Mindful Generations that teaches permaculture farming courses to Haitian communities. We began partnering with them in March of this year and through a biweekly class, they have helped us clear out a portion of our three acres, plow the soil and get it ready for planting.

Last week, we purchased about 30 little mango and papaya tree seedlings which we tenderly planted in rows on another section of our land. And this week, we’ve been planting the last of our fence posts around a newly-acquired tract of land to complete our fine fence. The garden has become one of my favorite places in all of Haiti. It’s always cool under the shade of the mango trees, water trickles cheerfully through our newly-dug irrigation canals, the soil feels soft and alive beneath my bare feet. Ripe mangos dangle from the branches just waiting for a skilled climber to come up and retrieve them with a machete.

This evening, we brought back more than 30 massive mangos to our kitchen, ready to be turn into Dieula’s world-class mango juice tomorrow.

VBS: Teaching kiddos– and grownups too!

A guest post by Hannah.

One year ago I ventured to Haiti with the Rosemila Project. I helped teach Vacation Bible School, and during this time God revealed to me the sweet, creativity he has placed in all his children.  Green lions, florescent yellow lambs, and green speckled giraffes. Noah’s Ark was given life at the creative, capable hands of these children. Excited faces darted to my feet from all corners of the classroom, coloring page in hand, all looking for an enthusiastic response to the coloring page they shoved in my hands.

When I traveled home I was very confused, I had received such joy and satisfaction out of nurturing this creativity! However I had just completed my degree at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandise, and was working as a freelance interior designer, which I enjoyed but not the way I had enjoyed loving children through teaching Vacation Bible School. I was scared and lost, but I decided to move to Austin, Texas from California to receive my degree in Art Education at the University of Texas.

So here I stand, back in Haiti. My very first day teaching Vacation Bible School, we told of how Jesus and his disciples were sailing, a storm began to rage and the disciples were scared. They woke him and calmed the storm. That day we taught the children that Jesus will keep them safe from things that scared them, they just have to trust him! We went on to color and once again I felt the same joy I felt a year ago.

After class, I was talking with God and He showed me something very important through teaching Vacation Bible School.  One year ago I sat on this same porch and I had no idea what I was supposed to do with my life, and like Jesus’ disciples I was scared at the storm I was facing. I trusted in God and moved to Texas all by myself to follow his calling for me, and I have been so blessed. Psalm 16:11 “You have made known to me the path of my life”.

Ready, Set, Sew!

A guest post by Angeline and Lindsey

30 women, 6 machines, 400 yards of fabric, 8 days.

An impossible task: teach these 30 how to sew. With a definite language barrier, limited resources, and such short time.

As we walked in on the first day, Elda shared her dream of seeing this workshop happen for the past three decades. 

She thought this dream was only hers; until 30 other women showed their eagerness to learn this trade.

And then, now. Finally. Here. Who would have thought – that 30 years ago when Elda first dreamed this dream, that God chose this time and place for the workshop to come to life.

Well that 30 years of waiting is over.

It’s no accident that God called these 30 here, each one has an eager heart and willing hands.

After 2 days, these women are sewing pleats! Not just any pleats – box peats! Tucks! Darts! Teaching themselves to manipulate the 4×10” squares of fabric we gave them to practice with.

 One woman in particular, I will never forget. She ran the pleat through the machine flawlessly, better than I could ever do. She held it up for me to see, triumphantly.

 “Professional!” we said. “Tres belle!”

 “Grace a Dieu,” she said as she pointed to the heavens. “Because of God.”

 Humbling, it was.

We are not just here to hand out fish, but rather we are teaching them how to cast their nets. So that the next day will come, and the day after that, and they won’t go hungry.

 

Meet the team!

We made it! All nine of us (and our passports), all 17 of our bags and all six of our sewing machines are now in Pastor Maula’s house in Gonaives, Haiti. Today marks our first full day of work but before I get to that, I should introduce the crew (in no particular order).

-Amanda’s blue eyes shimmer like the inside of a seashell and are often looking through the viewfinder of a camera—film preferred. She has a degree in fashion design and hopes to someday start her own non-profit clothing brand. In the meantime though, she makes a living as a print artist, drawing cartoons and caricatures of couples and families. People order her designs from all around the world, but she’s taken two weeks off to help the women here learn how to use sewing machines.

-Tripp, is just plain cool—in more ways than one. Though he feels most at home on a snowboard in the California mountains, I have noticed he seems to sweat far less than the rest of us in this tropical Haitian heat, even after playing a rousing soccer match with kids in the VBS. In addition to his non-perspiring skills, Tripp has demonstrated an aptitude for mental math, handy for calculating currency exchanges (a skill that will also serve him well when he heads to the University of Alabama to study Finance in the fall). When he isn’t doing mental math or keeping in his sweat, he’s looking out for his sister, Hannah (and occasionally giving her a hard time).

-Lindsey’s free spirit sent her to Bali for awhile before blowing her our way. There, she spent several months watering a number of orphanages around the island with her contagious laugh and positive spirit. On this trip, she serves as our documentarian, photographing and filming candid moments of chaos with her beautiful Canon 6D. When she isn’t hopping around island orphanages, she works as photographer in San Diego. She has a head full of thick hair that I am trying to convince her she should get braided.

-Hannah caught the Haiti bug last summer when she visited as a part of Cara’s team and she has made good on her promise to our orphan kids to return to them. Her energy, creativity and radiant smile transcend the language barrier and have her continuously surrounded with children, eager for a ride on her back or a turn wrestling her. She is by far the dominant blanc (white) jump-roper around here and getting better every day. Soon, she might even be able to give the little girls a run for their money.

-Josh—or J-Papa as the kids now call him—completes our team’s range of artistic talents with his guitar-playing and painting skills. His mellow finger-picking makes a pleasant addition to the constant din of the street as the older boys in the orphanage watch and learn. His favorite instrument however, is a brush. He plans to put his love of painting to use crafting a mural on one of the orphanage walls.

-Alyssa has, remarkably, yet to be bitten by a mosquito. Perhaps her small surface area makes her hard for them to find her—at just over 5 feet, she’s one of the few people I know who is shorter than me. She is also my cousin. Oh—and she designs all of Abercrombie and Fitch’s skirts for them. Convenient, since we’re teaching 30 women to sew skirts this week.

-Angeline is the brains behind this whole operation. She put her recent degree in fashion design to work designing the patterns we’re teaching the women and raised enough funds to buy all our materials and even cover some of our team expenses. Whether she’s washing dishes, sifting rocks to mix concrete or teaching women about grain lines in fabric, Angeline is committed to excellence in her work and she does it all with a sweet smile.

-Austin can swing a pick axe like he was born to do it. He’s also great for lifting heavy buckets of water and, as the tallest person on the team, reaching things from high places. As the only other soccer fan on the team, he’s a top contender for the coveted “best team member” award in my book. A recent high school graduate, he plans to attend college in the fall to study biomedical engineering. 

And then there’s me, Emily. I just graduated from Miami University with a journalism and anthropology double major– so basically, a degree in telling people’s stories. After I finish storytelling in Haiti this summer, I’ll be on my way to Egypt in the fall. I enjoy being barefoot, reading good books and eating raw cookie dough. 

And there you have it! We’re an eclectic bunch with different giftings but we’re united in our purpose: to learn from and serve the people of Gonaives. Stay tuned for more stories as the week goes on!

Some assembly required

Our trip is around the corner! By this time in four days, we will be in Pastor Maula’s house in Gonaives. This trip has been nearly a year in the making but it is finally all coming together and I am proud to present to you:

The 2014 summer service project (some assembly required). Includes:

–Six sewing machines, gifted to us and tuned up so they’re like new

–Eight bins of colorful fabric that will return to the U.S. in a few months as shirts and skirts

–Nine team members from San Diego to Ohio, among us fashion designers, a photographer, a painter, a journalist and an art teacher, each putting their gifts and passions to use.

–Thirty women (mothers of children in our school) who will be trained in our sewing workshop

–Fifty kids from the feeding program and orphanage who will attend our summer camp every day

-$4,515 raised to purchase the startup materials for the workshop and supplies for the camp

–Twelve full days of running the workshop and summer camp, helping out around the compound and garden, and spending time with the children in the orphanage (taking time out occasionally, of course, to watch the World Cup)

 

What a great adventure this will be 🙂 Stay tuned from June 23 to July 5 for pictures and updates! 

We exist to empower Haitians with skills to grow their communities spiritually, physically and intellectually with a goal to be free from foreign aid. That’s our mission statement, the driving force behind everything we do. Over the last two years, we’ve seen incredible growth in our community on all three levels. We organized a camp for 80 children last summer to teach them about the gospel through activities and story-telling; our school has grown from 30 to more than 130 students, pre-K through 6^th grade; we’ve watched each of them grow taller and take on weight; and we’ve celebrated a significant spike school attendance rates and test scores. Our mission to see growth is being accomplished.

Nana, one of the mothers in the program with Emily and Mikael on Mikael’s graduation from kindergarten

Now it’s time to tackle the second goal of our mission statement: helping communities and individuals to be free from foreign aid. When Emily spent the summer in Haiti last year, she formally interviewed nine parents in the program. Nine of nine reported no source of stable income; six of nine were single mothers who reported “laundry” or “commerce” as their only source of income. Pastor Maula reported that only about 30 percent of all parents were able to pay their children’s tuition (about $3/month) regularly. And all the interview subjects listed a lack of stable income as a leading factor in the problems of poor child education and health in their community.

Twenty years ago, Maula’s wife Elda had an idea for a way to help with the problem of income insecurity: start a sewing workshop and teach young women to sew. So she began one and taught about 20 women how to make aprons that they sold in the local market. But before long, she ran out of funds to keep the project going and had to let that dream go. We believe Elda’s sewing workshop is our next step in accomplishing the Rosemila Project’s mission in Gonaives.

So, a small group of us is returning this summer equipped with five donated sewing machines to help Elda launch her workshop. The workshop will train 30 mothers whose children are enrolled in the program to create simple men’s and women’s clothes to be sold in the U.S., as well as children’s school uniforms (required by all schools, public or private) to be sold in Haiti. Part of the profits will go toward covering the feeding program’s expenses and part will go toward providing a source of income for the women in the workshop.

Each dollar the sewing workshop generates for the program and the mothers involved in it is a dollar that will not come from foreign aid; it’s a dollar that empowers, that frees and that builds. We are so excited to take this next step in advancing our mission in Gonaives.

To get there will cost $4,000 in start-up expenses: fabric (as much as possible to be purchased locally), thread, pins, scissors, etc. And this is where we need your help. Please consider making a one-time gift and join with us in building a program of lasting impact. To donate, you can visit http://www.gofundme.com/rosemilaproject and give directly toward this project.

To find out about the other things we’re doing and the other ways you can get involved, check out our Get Involved page. 

Angeline and Hannah, two recent graduates from the San Diego school of Fashion Design who are spearheading this new project.

 

Back to school!

School is back in full swing and so is the Rosemila Project. This fall, we have 130 children registered—for those who don’t recall, that’s nearly three times the number we had when we began a year and a half ago.

Under the close supervision of Pastor Maula’s wife, Elda and our kitchen director, Dieula, the children all receive one meal a day, made fresh in the kitchen using all locally-purchased ingredients: eggs and bread from our neighbor’s store, goat slaughtered right on our property, rice and beans from the market. And soon, mangos, peppers, tomatoes and carrots from our very own garden.

Over the summer, thanks to a team from Las Vegas and San Diego, we were able to finish the construction of a wall around a plot of land Pastor Maula has long desired to turn into a garden. With the help of some local agronomists, we are working on planting our first crop this fall. One day, we plan to produce all our vegetables and fruits from this 2-acre property, cutting our monthly expenses in half. It’s exciting to see the start of that right now!

Another exciting step we’re taking in the program is the launch of an artisanal center. The center will employ parents from the program who are unable to pay their monthly tuition in creating simple hand-crafted jewelry and clothes to be sold both in Haiti and the US. This will generate both income for the feeding program to move it toward self-sustainability and a steady source of income for parents who are unable to find or keep a permanent job. We are starting this fall with the creation of simple bracelets made from paper but plan to purchase sewing machines later in the year.

So there’s a lot going on in our community in Gonaives this fall: 130 kids getting one meal a day, a garden being planted, an artisanal center in its infancy stages… All steps being taken toward fulfilling our mission of empowering Haitians with skills to grow their communities spiritually, physically and intellectually with a goal to be free from foreign aid.

Want to get involved? Partner with us through giving on a monthly basis— a gift of $15 feeds a child for a month (yes—it’s getting cheaper for us the more children we bring in!). Check out our Get Involved page for more ideas for how you can join with us in serving the community of Gonaives.

 

A summer well-worth it

I write this post from the beautiful, milky white, affluent township of Oxford, Ohio, home to the great educational institution of Miami University. I’m now one week in to my senior year of college… Hard to imagine I’m even on the same planet as the city of Gonaives!

 

I find myself going back there in my mind a lot. Back to the mother of an eight-year old boy who told me helplessly, “We only live day by day. Somedays, we can buy food. Somedays we can’t.” To try to earn an income, this mother takes out loans to purchase goods to resell, and paying off those loans so they don’t accrue interest takes precedence over feeding her children, she explains.

 

To be so helpless is crippling. When you can’t even know for sure when your next meal will be, how can you even begin to think about making a better future for yourself or your community? When it is uncertain whether your child will live until next month, what’s the point in setting aside money for his school fees? There can be no upward mobility for those whose life is about surviving, subsisting. 

 

“But thanks to the feeding program, I know my child will eat every day,” one mother said. These sentiments were echoed in every interview I had. For the first time in their lives, these children know that they will eat every day. There could be no greater relief for their parents. 

 

But that’s not all. 

 

Also for the first time, these children are trul

y able to learn at school. There’s a
Haitian proverb that says, “A hungry stomach has no ears,” and every teacher I interviewed echoed this. 

 

“In the school’s first year, the test scores were so horrible, I wasn’t sure if we should even continue,” Pasteur Maula shared. “It was clear the children weren’t learning, they had no energy. But ever since we started the feeding program, the whole ambiance at the school has changed. Now, we can hear them singing and playing. And their test scores are so much better.” 

 

Not only is the feeding program providing parents and children with security for the present; it is enabling them to look ahead to the future as well. There are a couple school sponsorship programs already in existence in Gonaives that pay children’s school fees– but there is no one feeding them.

 

“There is only one feeding program like this in the city and it’s here,” said Miss Martine, a nurse who volunteers her help to our program a few days a month. “And there is a noticeable difference in the kids here. You can see it in their skin, their eyes, their behavior.” 

 

You can also see it in the numbers. On average, the children gained 13 lbs each over the course of the last school year. We track their heights and weights on a monthly basis and have seen visible progress. I’ll work on getting the full report for last year up on this website ASAP so you can see the progress too. 

 

If there is one thing I learned this summer it is that the impact of this program is far greater than I could ever have schemed up when I got roped into all of this as an 18 year old… And there is so much more we can do. 

 

We’re not stopping here. We’ve got our garden up and running– a huge step toward sustainability for us. We’re launching an artisanal workshop this fall for parents whose income is insufficient to cover their child’s school fees. The workshop will eventually produce items for sale both in the US and in Haiti to generate revenue for the program and income for the parents.

 

And we’re taking in new students this year as well, bringing us up to 150 children.  This of course means we’re going to have increase our monthly budget too.  And that’s where you come in. Our new goal will be $2400 a month, averaging out to $16 a month per child. 

 

That’s 4 drinks at Starbucks. Or a meal at Applebees. Versus an investment in the future of a Haitian child. We currently have about half of our necessary monthly support coming in. 

 

For those of you who are already supporting us financially– we can’t thank you enough. The impact of your gifts is greater than any of us can see. But if you are not yet giving on a monthly basis, please do consider joining with us in this. We cannot continue to do this work without you!

 

To give a one-time donation or set up an automatic withdrawal every month, you can go to our page on the World Link Associates website: www.worldlinkassociates.org

 

Or you can go old-school and mail us a check at: 

World Link Associates

12921 Portland Ave S

Burnsville, MN 

55337

 

To find out about other ways you can get involved, visit our “Get Involved” page and join with us in the beautiful redemption of Rosemila’s death.