Education is the cornerstone of our connecting strategy and our legacy. In 1989, JoAnne Kuehner, Hope for Haiti Founder, first visited Haiti while volunteering on an emergency airlift mission organized by AmeriCares. The poverty of the country had an immediate and lifetime impact on JoAnne. So much so, that she was determined to do what she could to help the Haitian people move out of destitute poverty. JoAnne deeply believed that the only way to do that was through education. Hope for Haiti was thus founded with education being the foundation for all of the organization’s programs and initiatives, with a particular focus on the Haitian children.
Centering our involvement on connecting children and adults with Education is critical to developing lasting sustainability. We believe the pinnacle of connection with the greatest leverage of impact through supporting educational professionals with the tools, training and resources they need to be successful. By supporting 24 partner schools in the greater south of Haiti with teacher salary subsidies and support for specific community or classroom needs (i.e. construction, school materials, benches/blackboards, teacher training, first aid supplies, clean water, etc.), Hope for Haiti is impacting 300 teachers and over 6,000 students each year.

Objective: To provide the children of Haiti with access to a quality education.

Although the Haitian Constitution explicitly states "...education shall be free. Primary education shall be compulsory. State education shall be free at every level,” the reality of the Haitian education system is far from what the 2013 Millennium Development Goals mandated of all participating countries. According the World Bank, 50% of children do not attend school, and 80% of those who do attend private schools - public schools can accommodate less than 10 percent of the school age population. Without qualified teachers or adequate textbooks, the quality of education is generally poor. This has resulted in poor test scores, grade repetition and high dropout rates.
A 2004 World Bank household vulnerability study determined that in addition to initial enrollment and quality-related problems, families often pulled children out of school in the face of economic distress. As a result, kids end up cycling in and out of school with the result that today, three-fourths of children in primary school are on average two years too old for their grade level.
Hope for Haiti made the decision to partner with community and religious private schools in order to increase access to education. By providing necessary assistance to private schools, Hope for Haiti can help to increase student enrollment as well as the overall quality of education.

Haiti’s current healthcare system is insufficient to meet even the minimum medical needs of its people. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) states that only 60% of Haiti’s population has some form of access to healthcare, whereas the other 40% rely on traditional medicine in the rural areas. Limited access and poor quality in the Haitian healthcare sector cause significant delays in the country’s development. A lack of medical treatment or medications can keep men and women from working and children from going to school. Keeping the Haitian people healthy is critical to the overall development of their country.
Although Hope for Haiti began with a focus in education, in 1997, Founder JoAnne Kuehner joined forces with Dr. Keith Hussey, a gastroenterologist, to incorporate healthcare and nutrition into the organization’s mission. Hope for Haiti quickly discovered that providing this additional support is absolutely critical to promoting educational success. During its work in the area of education, the organization found that clinics and medical facilities were available, but that their capacities were severely limited by a lack of materials, medications, and well-paid staff. In response, we began procuring the items that these local facilities needed and transporting them to Haiti where they could be used to benefit the poorest of the poor. Since 2008, the organization’s Healthcare Program has expanded drastically, primarily thanks to the opening of Hope for Haiti’s Infirmary St. Etienne, a Haitian-staffed outpatient primary healthcare center and pharmacy in downtown Les Cayes. The Infirmary now hosts full-time three doctors, a dentist and dental assistant, nine nurses, a laboratory technician, an electronic medical records data officer, and two administrators. It specializes in low-cost quality primary care for approximately 12,000 patients annually, many of whom are seen regularly for chronic diseases including diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. With a dedicated Haitian medical team and a reputation for quality primary care in the South, the organization has been able to lessen its need for outside medical mission trips and now proactively requests training from key National and International specialists when needed.
Hope for Haiti touches the lives of over 500,000 people by providing financial and medical support to over 20 healthcare and nutrition centers. The objective is to improve the overall health of partner communities with the patient at the center of this process in a three-pronged strategy: 1) Prevention and Outreach- Distributing medications and supplies to rural partner facilities throughout the South and providing school-based public health outreach to students and their communities. 2) Treatment & Follow-up Care- Providing patients with low-cost quality primary, laboratory, dental, surgical, and wound care at our Infirmary St. Etienne. 3) Capacity Building- Organizing opportunities for Haitian medical professionals to receive advanced medical training.

For many places around the world, water is often the center of the community. People come to wash their clothes, drink, bathe, water their animals, cook and so on. Hope for Haiti’s clean water program started in 2007 after witnessing several challenges Haitians faced when it came to clean water: access, quality and consistency. We now have UV purification systems and wells located in 15 strategic locations including our Infirmary St. Etienne, other community schools and healthcare clinics, and an orphanage. Along with safe and great tasting water, this program provides critical education on the importance of using clean water and how the water systems work. Our clean water technician has trained one community member on monitoring and maintenance of the system.

Our Investments in lasting Infrastructure improvements remove barriers to progress and catapult a community’s potential forward. In addition, through careful planning and emergency response, we can ensure that these families have the tools they need in the wake of a disaster. Every community needs to invest in infrastructure, but in low-resources settings like rural communities in Haiti, a relatively small investment in the construction of a school building, solar power, or basic materials can make all the difference.

Bolstering the local Economy by increasing access to credit, making connection to markets, supporting business training and marketing, and injecting resources into identified businesses and opportunities, fuels the communities we serve to become self-reliant, self-sufficient and self-made success stories.
By investing in community Infrastructure and Economy, we Empower our partners to reduce their reliance upon Hope for Haiti and increase reliance upon themselves. Self-reliance is the ultimate objective of true sustainability and the goal of our empowerment strategy, which seeks to strategically and significantly reduce community program distributions/financial support over a 10- year time horizon to foster the creation of Connected, Healed and Empowered Sustainable Communities.