ABOUT US
GDE Haiti is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization providing tuition sponsorship for children in Haiti. Our ministry is based on the belief that children are the heart of Haiti and they hold the hope for Haiti’s future. Our mission is to build strong leaders in Haiti and we believe that starts with educating children with no other possibility of obtaining an education. We aim to show Christ’s love to the community of Massey through providing for the basic need for education.
We are a small organization serving the people of Massey, Haiti, a mountain community on the southern coast of Haiti. We provide tuition funding for children living in Massey and aim to equip them with everything they need to have a successful academic career. The need for
education in Haiti is so great and we feel an undeniable calling to be working in this area. Our hope is to see more and more children educated each year and that through our ministry God’s name would be glorified.GDE Haiti began when our director, Hugues, moved to Massey, Haiti in June 2008 while awaiting his visa to to come join his family in the United States. Shortly after he arrived, Hugues was approached by a woman in Massey asking if he and Jodi would adopt her 6-year-old daughter, Yvena. As Hugues spoke with her, he found that she wanted to place Yvena for adoption only because she was not able to afford to send her to school and wanted her to have that opportunity. Hugues and Jodi felt God leading them to pay Yvena’s tuition, calming her mother’s fears and enabling her to remain with her family. As they told this story, many
other people expressed interest in donating towards the education of children in Massey. By September 2008, enough donations had been received to send 14 children to school for the ’08-’09 school year! Our commitment is to continue the education of these 14 children and include more children each year, one day seeing each of them graduate high school. GDE Haiti, Inc. was founded in May 2009 for this purpose.
We currently support 49 students, but more than numbers, we have been blessed to build relationships in the community and for this program to be embraced and largely led by those in Haiti. We work closely with local schools, churches, and businesses in order to provide not only education but income that benefits the entire community.