Children of the Promise

The goal of COTP is to have there be a healthy Christian home and family for every Haitian child.

Our Christ-centered mission is to provide excellent physical, spiritual, emotional, educational & economic care for at-risk children and families in Haiti, empowering the most vulnerable and disadvantaged.

Our Values:
Joy: Joy springs from the love and hope we find in Christ. Joy sustains and encourages our work.

Family: God desires for every child to develop within a loving, Christ-centered family.

Health: COTP views spiritual, physical, emotional, and economic well-being intertwined to form a person′s complete health.

Value: COTP cares for all people as image-bearers of God their Creator.

Stewardship: Serving God well with our finances means proper money management and reliance on God to supply our needs.

Relationship: Building community with governing bodies, local churches, neighbors, coworkers and other organizations is core to carrying out God′s mission.

Discipleship: Equipping and encouraging individuals to reach their full potential.

By continually being on mission towards seeing our vision come to fruition and displaying these values while we do so, we aim to see poverty alleviation, self-sustainment, and empowered leadership in the lives of those we serve.

Countless studies show that nurturing family environments support healthy child growth and development. In the context of a family, children learn how to interact socially and to express feelings and thoughts by watching family members. Children who grow in a nurturing family environment have a great sense of identity and culture. Because of this, we pursue family in all we do.

Since our founding year, 1998, we have grown in our knowledge of some of the key contributors that put families at risk of separation; loss of caregiver, extreme poverty, disability and disease, mental illness and lack of education and resources. Taking this knowledge into consideration, we have moved upstream and developed our family strengthening programs that address some of these main contributors in effort to dramatically decrease the number of orphaned and abandoned children in our area. Our vision is a healthy Christian home and family for every Haitian child, and this is our approach in serving vulnerable children and families:

1. Serving families at risk of separation by investing in family strengthening programs, with the goal to keep families together and to empower them towards a life of sustainable health and wellness. *see "family strengthening programs"

2. When a separation of child from family occurs, we pursue family-based care and use temporary family-style residential care whenever needed, with the goal to bring a child into a healthy forever family. *see "domestic foster care and adoption and on-campus care"

In order to reach our goals, we must invest in local Haitian leaders to be the front runners. It is important to rise up Haitians to own this work and take the necessary steps forward in caring for the at-risk children and families we serve. Our committed international staff serving on the ground, as well as a small number of staff in North America, also provide the necessary work towards carrying us closer to our goals.

We rely on our donor base to provide the financial means necessary to provide such quality programs and facilities. We are not financially beholden to a small group of donors, but instead have garnered broad support from many smaller donors. Many of our supporters have also volunteered in Haiti to see first hand the work that is being accomplished.

Since our beginning, we have learned to make changes when and where as needed. Starting as a small orphanage, COTP has now grown into a multi-program organization and has become a leader in Northern Haiti for ethical orphan and family care. In 2014, we changed our model of orphan care from institutionalized care to temporary family-style foster care homes. Through this change, we have seen positive developmental and attachment changes in the children through the new model. The impacts are seen far beyond the years that the child is in our care. Adoptive families have attested to the impact that they see in their child in their home.

As we have achieved a higher standard for orphan care, we continually seek to better understand the contributors as to why children are orphaned or abandoned to begin with. Because of this knowledge, we have further invested in our family strengthening program, working to empower and enable families to care for their child in their home.